Avoiding Booby Traps
So the ethical issues here are: how much regulation is called for? How much can the average consumer be expected to know before they buy something? Should certain things be kept off the market because they're too dangerous for us? And where does the manufacturer’s responsibility come in?
Here's a good example of why caveat emptor is a problem for consumers: the manufacturing of silicone breast implants. There was a huge stink in the 1990s over these gelatinous blobs that women were buying in droves and having implanted in their chests.
The implants as it turned out, were prone to leakage-in some cases after their cosmetic sur-geries, women found the silicone had seeped out of their implants and migrated into other part of their bodies! Class action suits against implant manufacturers resulted, and some women even claimed that their implants caused serious illnesses, like lupus or cancer.
Should we apply "buyer beware" thinking to such a case? Bear in mind that, even if the women had done serious research before having the implants done, they wouldn't have found any studies available about the likelihood of seepage Why? Because manufacturers hadn’t chone any such studies prior to marketing them. Besides, it's hard for us average folks to read te medical or reports on products and interpret their mean- technical names of ingredients on your ill bottles? Ack! The have you ever read the p words are unpronounceable life, but so you should keep this in mind: Caveat emptor works in some areas of consumer not others. You have the obligation to make sure that the car or boat you are buying works properly (test drive it and that the new pajamas you want to buy don't have rips in them (try them on) We even have consumer magazines to help us out on these purchases. But it's much more difficult to "test drive" your breast implants, research the 10-syllable drug that your doctor is recommending, or find out whether psychotherapy will work for you. So in some areas of consumer life, a laissez-faire approach is mora While saying "what acceptable; in other areas it isn't. you see is what you get" might be fair with the car boat, or pajamas, it sure as heck isn't fair for the Hydroxpropyl Methylcellulose that's in your ibuprofen! Enough said.
Payback Time The preceding issues lead us to ask whether businesses owe something to us, not just as consumers, but as a society. Some business ethicists claim that the only moral obligations businesses have is make lots of that, there's nothing more. Why? Because once we start businesses to do more-to be run in certain ways, to hire certain costly environmental standards--then we interfere wi certain people, to meet the whole point of business, which is profits. The ethically best businesses, on this view, doing their job well: making lots of money, creating jobs, stimulating are those that are the economy--that kind of thing
but there's business and then there's business. Some corporations hugely profitable because they hire people at near-slave wages. They keep their overheads low not no spending anything on the workplace, so workers are stuck in dilapidated buildings with running water and no bathrooms. Or they keep overhead low by not doing research before putting products on the market (like the silicone implant fiasco), by violating environmental standards, or by going against fair business practices. So ethicists who claim that businesses only have a moral responsibility to make money aren't factoring in all these issues.
you know that saying "No man is an island"? Well, no business is an island, either! Even so-called private corporations have benefited from public funding. Think of it this way: funds researchers to do studies on all kinds of things, from soup to nuts, and these studies are fair game for corporations to use, too. These researchers are paid out of public funds: so in a real sense, businesses take a free ride on the studies paid for by tax