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Download the Loyal Grocery Customer App for Exclusive Electronic Coupons!) and the Fact That Businesses Want to Transact with You Gives You Bargaining Power BOYCOTT ETHICS by CALEB PICKARD B.S., University of Nebraska–Lincoln, 2011 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy 2019 ii This thesis entitled: Boycott Ethics written by Caleb Pickard has been approved for the Department of Philosophy. ________________________ Dr. David Boonin (chair), Professor of Philosophy _____________________________ Dr. Alastair Norcross, Professor of Philosophy _____________________________ Dr. Michael Huemer, Professor of Philosophy _____________________________ Dr. Chris Heathwood, Associate Professor of Philosophy _____________________________ Dr. Benjamin Hale, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies Date: November 6, 2019. The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Pickard, Caleb (Ph.D., Philosophy) Boycott Ethics Dissertation directed by Professor David Boonin Abstract [344 words] Recent decades have seen an explosion in consumer activism: boycotts, buycotts, divestments, ethical consumption campaigns, and certification/labelling schemes. Understandably, this period has also marked growing philosophical interest in the ethical contours of consumer activism and of boycotting broadly construed. This dissertation addresses some key moral questions about these activities. In Chapter 1, I offer an argument in defense of consumer permissions to make morally- motivated consumption decisions (i.e. to boycott, with their own purchases), grounded in the presumptive admissibility of acting on our moral reasons. I defend this argument from one prominent and far-reaching objection which claims that ethical consumption is often impermissible for being incompatible with liberal democratic values. In Chapter 2, I defend our permissions to make morally motivated purchases from a host of other objections, which claim, e.g., that boycotts wrongfully harm innocents or are objectionably unfair to targets, harming them excessively, inconsistently, capriciously, or hypocritically. I reject these objections for overgeneralizing. Each fails to articulate a morally relevant difference between ethically motivated consumption and normal (i.e. not ethically motivated) consumption and implausibly implies that many untroubling consumer behaviors are in fact morally condemnable. In Chapter 3, I consider what permissions we have to support and promote boycotts by means other than our own purchases. I argue that our permissions to make our own ethical purchases entail further permissions to support the ethical purchases of others. Making an argument iv from epistemic humility, I also defend the view that these permissions to support boycotting are relatively restrictive and don’t vary with the apparent moral urgency of our causes. Chapter 4 addresses a common skeptical worry about the existence of consumer obligations and moral reasons. Given that individual consumers often seem helpless to make a difference (i.e. are ineffective, lacking in control, and causally impotent), “ethical” consumption does not actually seem to promote the good. I argue that all but two of the proposed solutions to this problem fail. The promising solutions either ground consumer reasons in what we can accomplish together, as collectives, or in the expected value or utility of our purchases. v Acknowledgements Let me express my deepest gratitude to my adviser David Boonin for his support and immensely helpful (and bafflingly prompt) feedback on this dissertation and to my persistently helpful, patient, and supportive dissertation committee members: Ben Hale, Chris Heathwood, Mike Huemer, Alastair Norcross – and, again, David Boonin. I’d like to thank the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder for their generous Dissertation Fellowship funding in the Fall of 2018, which facilitated the completion of Chapters 1 and 2 of this project. I also owe many and ineffable debts to my students, colleagues, friends, teachers, and philosophical mentors. I wouldn’t be able to list you all if I tried, but you are hereby acknowledged. Thank you. Finally and of course, my utmost thanks to my parents and partner. If I were any more indebted to you, you could each file a lien on my diploma. vi Contents Chapter 1: Permission to Shop Freely?……………..…………………………………………. 1 Introduction………………………...……………………………………………………... 1 What do I mean by ‘boycotting’? …………….…………………………………… 4 Two kinds of boycotting activities……………….………………………………... 7 An outline of the project…………………………………………………………... 9 A plausible argument and the Public Sphere Objection…………………………………... 10 Markets, shields, and spheres…………………………………………………….. 14 Necessary modifications to the Public Sphere Objection………………………… 17 Case-based objections to the Modified Public Sphere Objection………………………… 21 A full reply to the Modified Public Sphere Objection………………………………...…... 25 Chapter 2: Ethical Consumption is Business-as-Usual………………………………….….. 35 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………... 35 Two constraints………………………………………………………………….. 36 Two kinds of objections…………………………………………………………. 40 On Substantive Objections and why we can ignore them……………………………….... 42 Procedural Objections…………………………………………………………………… 47 Does boycotting wrongfully harm innocents? …………………………………… 47 Is boycotting unfair? …………………………………………………………….. 53 Bias Objection #1: Individual inconsistency……………………………... 55 Bias Objection #2: Group capriciousness………………………………... 58 Bias Objection #3: Hypocrisy……………………………………………. 60 vii Disproportionality Objection #1: Overharm…………………………….. 73 Disproportionality Objection #2: Relative Innocents……………………. 75 Does boycotting work? ………………………………………………………….. 77 Chapter 3: Jus in Boycott………………………………………………………………………. 81 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………... 81 An Argument, a Challenge, a Reply……………………………………………………… 82 Moderately Objectionable Means and the Proportional Permissions View……….. 90 The Restrictive Permissions View and a Better Analogy…………………………. 97 Other Objections……………………………………………………………………….. 102 Are Purchasing Decisions Irrelevant? …………………………………………... 103 Transfer Failures………………………………………………………………... 107 Transfer Failure #1: Backfires…………………………………………... 108 Transfer Failure #2: Capriciousness…………………………………….. 110 Transfer Failure #3: Non-authorization………………………………… 112 Transfer Failure #4: Politicization……………………………………… 115 Transfer Failure #5: Diluted Power…………………………………….. 116 Chapter 4: The Helplessness Problem………………………………………………………. 119 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 119 On Consumer Obligations and Reasons……………………………………….... 120 The Challenge…………………………………………………………………………... 123 On the Control Principle……………………………………………………….. 124 In Support of the Control Principle…………………………………………….. 131 viii The Consumer Helplessness Claim……………………………………………... 135 Responding to the Helplessness Problem………………………………………………. 141 Rejecting the Control Principle and Involvement Explosion……………………. 142 Control Principle Alternatives: Complicity Approaches………………… 147 Control Principle Alternatives: Virtue Approaches……………………... 155 Control Principle Alternatives: Collective Action Approaches………….. 166 Rejecting the Consumer Helplessness Claim……………………………………. 181 The Expected Value Solution………………………………………….... 185 The Objection from Ignorance…………………………………………. 192 The Objection from Vagueness………………………………………… 197 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………….. 207 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………... 209 1 Chapter 1 – Permission to Shop Freely? Boycotting, Democracy, and a Defense of Non-Deference Introduction Ethical consumerism is having a moment. It is now easier than it’s ever been for consumers to link together, to share information, to organize, and to communicate directly with public figures and corporations. Indeed, the social media era can sometimes feel like a never-ending call for consumer action from all quarters. Consider this not-at-all exhaustive list of prominent U.S. boycotts from 2018. In March, gun control activist David Hogg called for an advertising boycott of Laura Ingraham’s FOX News program after a Twitter post in which she derided him for “whining” about his college application rejections. In response more than a dozen companies pulled their ads from the show.1 In July, the American Family Association (AFA) renewed its call for a boycott of Target Corp. – a tiff that began in 2016 when Target announced a new restroom/changing room policy that encourages individuals to use whichever facilities best suited their gender identity.2 A petition- to-boycott on the AFA website has collected more than 1.5 million signatures since then.3 In August, the chairman of the California Democratic Party called for a boycott of In-N-Out following 1 Perez, Maria. 2018. “Laura Ingraham Advertising Boycott: Here Are the Companies That Have Pulled Out of Fox News Host’s Show.” Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/laura-ingraham-david-hogg- advertisements-875876. 2 “Continuing to Stand for Inclusivity.” Target Corporate. Accessed September 7, 2018. http://corporate.target.com/article/2016/04/target-stands-inclusivity. 3 “Avoid Target: Do Your Back-to-school Shopping Elsewhere.” Accessed September 7, 2018. https://www.afa.net/activism/action-alerts/2018/avoid-target-do-your-back-to-school-shopping-elsewhere/ 2 revelations that the regional burger chain had donated $25,000
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