In a conversation with my daughter, the other day, the topic came up about the ethics of people who contribute nothing, but still benefit from others efforts. She was wondering, if the situation arose where you needed to rely on one another to survive, how would you deal with people like that? Yet the chances are, if a situation arrived where everyone was required to pull their weight in order to survive, everyone would do what was needed, because there was no other choice.
In our society today, people benefit without putting any of their own effort in, because they can. If you're still going to get whatever you need and want without any effort on your part, then there's no incentive for you to put in any effort. Most people take the path of least resistance to get what they need or want.
A teenager might be pretty unhelpful around the house, but they know they're not going to starve and they can get a drink any time they want because it's there for them. In the back of their minds, they know that the parents work for the money to pay for the groceries and go to the supermarket to buy those groceries, but they aren't going to lose sleep on it so they just don't think about it. But what if the parents worked such long hours they don't have the time to do the shopping? In that case they might depend on the teen to do that for them and if they fail to do it, then no-one eats. So in a case like that the chances are they'll get on with hauling their butt to the supermarket, because no teen likes to go hungry or let their loved ones go hungry.
When we lived in houses heated by a wood fire, we had no choice but to collect the wood for it and light it each day, or we stayed cold. In modern centrally heated houses, we likely wouldn't choose to go back to heating it that way, because who has the time for it? Yet if the power grid went down, you'd quickly go back to using that fireplace, no matter how much time it took to get the fire going, especially in countries where you'd freeze to death without it.
In a way, we all benefit from the work of others, but much of is it not seen; out of sight out of mind. That cheap fashion which is imported from other countries where people barely earn a living wage. What we pay, compensates them very little for the work put in. Or when we use the convenience of a rubbish bin which seems to magically dispose of our waste for us.
Mark Boyle said it quite well:
Is it any wonder we have so many people who feel entitled when we've spent a life benefiting from others working behind the scenes? However, there's really no point in complaining about it when their situation has led them to that point. You can only say no and leave them to whine about the injustice of it.
I can't remember exactly when the convenience of plastic shopping bags came into being, but I do remember my mum and grandmother taking their own bags with them when they went grocery shopping. They did it because they had no other option. It was that or carry them home in your arms. Now people can cause a scene at the idea of their free plastic bags being banned and having to either bring their own or pay for the convenience of a reusable one.
As much as I advocate freedom of choice, I do see why people call for regulation. Recently, on the radio, I heard that a South Australian MP was thinking of implementing a ban on all single use plastics. I couldn't help thinking that it would be a good thing. There's no denying that plastic waste is getting out of hand and the truth is that most companies won't stop using it off their own back. It's cheap and convenient, but given no choice they would have to look at other options.
I wish I could say that customer demand would be enough to make them change things without legislation, but most of us are too lazy and end up giving into convenience. I try to take my reusables with me as much as possible, but that last minute decision to grab a take out often leaves me wishing they'd use something other than plastic or polystyrene containers. The best I can do is say no thanks on the plastic cutlery and head home to use our own. If I was more organised I could take a reusable container, but the containers are often the measures they use for portions so they probably wouldn't accept it anyway.
Without others saying, “no, we're not doing that for you any more” we'll probably keep taking the easiest path. There's a reason why the poorest people leave the smallest carbon footprint. It’s because they have no other choice.
Sometimes you do not see what people contribute and it may be more than you know.
This came up a lot in my accounting career. Someone would complain about another person not carrying their weight. but they did not know of the other person's struggles and input in places they could not see.
That is true. Sometimes it's not so much that the person isn't contributing, it's the perception of the accuser.
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Yes, we are all quick to judge. It's not easy to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
I used to work in a health food store: all the crunchy granola eco hippies shopped there. Do you know how rare it was for people to bring their own bags? At a conventional grocery you'd expect it more, but it was just as bad at the health food store.
And then I'd have half the people complementing me (I was a cashier) on how well I packed a bag for them; I packed their paper or plastic the same way I packed my own - heavy things on the bottom, light things on the top, fill the bag - and half the people would protest that it wouldn't hold the twenty yards they had to walk to their car. We didn't have the flimsy plastic bags like most stores have, we had the really sturdy ones that some customers reused for years. I would tell them that on the rare occasion I used one instead of my canvas bags, it would survive me walking miles (since I don't drive) with it packed that way, it would make to their car. Some of them still insisted I didn't know what I was doing and made me give them extra bags and repack their groceries into an unnecessary number of them. Because they were used to other stores that throw three things in a bag and send you home with twenty (a thing that drives me up a wall).
People take norms to be rules, and conveniences to be necessaries. We are creatures of habit way more than of reason.
There is a health food store here that several years ago banned ALL disposable bags, period - no paper OR plastic. If you don't bring your own, they have bins of the boxes they receive their orders in for you to use. People accept it (though I'm sure if you asked a cashier, they probably have a few customers who flip out about it, because that's retail life) and just take a box or bring their bags, because there's no other choice. As much as some of us try to be responsible, others will only do so if they're made to.
I am surprised! I rather expected more forethought from hippy types.
It seems we really are. I guess that's why we have to make something habit before we do it regularly. It took me a while to get into the habit of bringing my own bags, but now I keep some fold up ones in my handbag for unplanned purchases.
In England, one of the supermarkets had a reward points system and you got extra rewards for every one of your own bags you used. I think it cost 10p for one of their plastic bags and when it got too worn to keep using you could swap it for a new one and they'd recycle the old one. It was a clever ploy, really, because it won over a particular customer base, but still kept the ones who would rather just pay than bring their own. My daughter went back there recently and most places have stopped using plastic straws too.
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Yeah, some stores here will give you 5¢ per bag you bring to reuse. When I worked at that store, there was an option to take the credit or donate it to charity (usually something local like a school). I think Whole Foods started doing that when they bought out the stores I worked at, but I don't know if they still do. And now Whole Foods is owned by Amazon.
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Perhaps the people that have tanties over having to take a cardboard box have never shopped at Bunnings XD
Lol! I've been to Bunnings just for the boxes before! I'd be so disappointed if they stopped leaving them out for using.
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We don't have Bunnings here, I presume they have the same set up?
It's a hardware store chain and as far as I'm aware, they've never provided bags, but they put out their empty boxes at the front of the store so if you need them you can use them. I think, being a hardware store, bags aren't really something you expect to use anyway, so no-one had ever complained that they don't provide them. If you're doing a big shop, it's usually for big things that go straight into your car anyway. Other hardware stores don't even provide the boxes.
Ahh! Here even the hardware stores have bags. I used to work at one of those, too. It always struck me funny what people would put in a bag there. Like, sure, a bunch of loose plumbing bits or electrical outlets or some such. But like, loose sharp metal things? I was like, you know this will tear through as soon as you're out the door, right? 😂
😂 trails of nuts, bolts and nails to the cars. The store can collect them back up at the end of the day and resell them!
You must have some tales to tell working in different retail stores. Perhaps you should publish some. Customer service can be the worst, but also the most enlightening work.
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Years ago I started writing a guide to dealing with your doctor's office, from the perspective of having been a ward clerk and secretary in health care but I never finished it. I could also write a retail horror and humor stories book, I suppose. LOL Or just share tales on Steem!
I haven't read such a good analysis of entitlement in a long time. The examples that you use are from our daily life but we often don't realize how entitled we are.
It's so convenient to turn on or off the heating, to pack everything in the shop into plastic bags, to buy cheap clothes, etc. But we often don't realize what happened in the background and what kind of impact our behaviour has on other people or environment.
Thank you for this thoughtful post. It was my pleasure to read it and I'm happy to hear how your daughter thinks and what kind of questions she asks :)
Thank you for all the compliments! 😊
When I get frustrated because something's gone wrong and I can't do something as easily as I normally would, I try to remember how much had to go on behind the scenes for that to happen. It puts into perspective why it went wrong and reminds me that we used to manage without many things before these privileges came along. Then I find a different solution or wait, patiently, for the problem to be resolved.
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This is a good attitude! I will try to apply it too as I very often get impatient.. :)
Hey, @minismallholding.
While it's true that there are people who do contribute in ways we can't see, it is also true that there are plenty who do not, unless absolutely forced to do so. What's interesting about this, though, government and to an extent society tends to go in the opposite direction—instead of making them just uncomfortable enough to actually do something, instead, the laws are more likely to favor such folks continuing to provide little or nothing for their existence.
The thing about those who contribute behind the scenes, they are either compensated something for what they do, or we're the ones that are freeloading. If we're not paying fair market value for the clothes we wear, the food we eat, or the devices we use daily, then we're taking away from those who toiled to produce those items.
There really isn't anything free in this world. Someone, one way or another, is paying for it.
re: plastic bags
I believe that the discussion about what people do if left to their own devices is a good one. The issue becomes what to do about it. Again, government and society has a tendency to take over when unsatisfactory results are deemed to exist (unfortunately, they can also be made up, but I digress). The question becomes, who determines when that is, and then what to do about it, how to pay for it, and how to enforce it?
There are plastic bag bans in different towns in Oregon where I live. I'm not a fan of bans, but I am a fan of properly disposing of any sort of bag (paper, plastic, whatever) after it's used. We often reuse the plastic bags our groceries go into, mainly to dispose of other waste.
Others, I understand, leave their refuse lying around after it's used, on beaches, at parks, and many other public places because they can't be bothered to dispose of it properly. I wonder, though, because of their irresponsibility, do others need to be impacted by it? A ban on plastic or whatever would cause shockwaves throughout all kinds of industries and economies.
I can get behind consumers saying, I don't want this anymore. Those types of decisions are made on the individual level, and are based on whatever criteria each one believes is correct. A governing body usually takes their own reasoning, and even if it certainly does have a benefit, there's also an aspect of control.
So, I don't know. Having plastic choking the Earth is not a great option, and we should all do our part to prevent it. At the same time, regulating plastic out of existence or doing away with it in some fashion would have more repercussions than just preventing litter or tragedies caused by it. Even if there were cheap alternatives that manufacturers are somehow too lazy to make or promote, the fact that a governing body or regulatory agency stepped in and mandated it unless backed by a majority of the people is still tyranny of a sort.
The double edged sword of living in a free society is that some bad will happen, along with the good. We can't really ever be free of people's poor/bad decisions, nor will we be of our own. We can do what we can to lower risk and mitigate the damage, but more serious long term damage will be done if we allow more and more of our free will to be taken away.
I enjoyed this topic. Thanks for posting about it, and congratulations on the curie. Very well deserved, and nice to see on this kind of a post. :)
Thank you for your reply, Glen. I'm so glad you touched on the freedom vs control side and the potential, unforeseen downsides of sudden changes. I agree, every sudden large scale implemented change is pretty much guaranteed to have bad consequences. Which is why the slow changes of consumer demand is nearly always the better way to go.
Back to the bags again for example. Plastic came into use as a by product of the fuel industry. While we still have so much running on oil, that by product is going to be there and abolishing all plastic is just going to mean the need to find another way of disposing of it and it's probably going to be just as bad as the plastic waste. It's a chain in place and links need to be gradually replaced or it fails.
There are also uses for plastics which can't really be replaced by other materials. However, many single use plastics could be replaced with compostable plastics now. So the convenience of plastic bags can remain in place with potential escapees not causing so much of a problem.
Hopefully it's not restricted to Australia.On the side of government intervention, most people are so reliant on government doing things for them, they almost won't do anything until it's sanctioned by government and if they want something done will appeal to government to change it. I recently watched a documentary about a chap who went against everything that government recommended to restore dead farmland and it took him 30 years for people to finally start paying attention to what he was doing. Until then he was fighting everyone on it, particularly his neighbours. Here's the link to the documentary if you're interested: https://www.abc.net.au/austory/of-droughts-and-flooding-rains---part-1/9169558
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I wonder if Councils didn't provide 'free' (you're paying for it either way so may as well use it) rubbish pickup each week, how that would look at the supermarket.
I imagine if people worried about the cost of disposing of all that plastic packaging, wrapping; that concern would flow through to their purchasing decisions, which would change the way products are offered for sale.
That's a good question. I guess the response would really depend on the person and what habits they have. I was talking with someone who was saying how there were places where they used to use banana leaves to hold take out foods and their habit was to just stop them when they'd finished, leaving them to rot back into the ground. When plastic was introduced, the habit was already there so now they have a huge plastic waste problem. If all public waste bins here disappeared I can imagine we'd have a similar problem.
If council bins were removed, would the companies take it upon themselves to provide bins near or in their stores at their own cost? It would certainly be beneficial to them as it would be a service provided which would potentially attract and endear more customers to them. Angel was telling me that in areas in the US, Dominos pizza pays to have potholes repaired when councils fail to do anything. They plaster something like a "repaired by Dominos" logo on it. Now that's good marketing!
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I was more referring to our home wheelie bins. If council stopped giving us all that 'free' volume to fill each week; we'd show a lot more discernment in our purchasing decisions.
I did think that was what you meant and thought they'd probably use the public bins instead. Then I realised that these are also paid for out of our council rates. My brain kind of went off at a tangent from there...
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you wrote a really good post, a great point of reflection for all of us. It is true that the perfective of those who do something and contribute to the welfare of the planet is quite low. And unfortunately, marketing teaches us that companies sell what the customer buys. If no one bought the plastic water bottles any more, no one would produce them. The same is true for plastic bags. It is a question of ethical responsibility, we are responsible for the world we wish to leave to our children: if everyone were more sensitive to the topic, there would be an improvement, but as you say, unfortunately, habit and poverty make us people who are not responsible. Thank you for sharing your thoughtsHi @minismallholding
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