Hello, Photoshrink.
I am most interested in your remarks about ethics for consumers. I
share the belief that the consumer has ethical obligations to the
merchant (retailer/dealer.)
Where I might part company with you, surprisingly, is that ethical
behavior, contrary to Christian presumptions, does not need to be
Biblically based. There were ethical men and women before the time
of Abraham and Sarah. There are ethical people today in countries
which don’t know Christianity or the Bible. Ethics in Buddhism,
Hinduism, as well as countless other thought systems, take no
inferior position to the Bible when it comes to addressing ethical
behavior.
We’re off the subject here, for sure, but maybe a few viewers might
find these thoughts interesting.
Strange that I just responded to another of your posts in this very forum. Clearly we are on the same nerve, if not necessarily the same wavelength.
I, too, agree that we should act morally and ethically when doing business. About ten years ago, while living in St. Louis, I purchased an L lens from one local retailer and a high-end EOS body from another, in the idea that we should help our local guys. Having paid 20% (plus 6% sales tax on top of that) extra over mail order to buy local, I was basically greeted with "Next customer!"
I really wanted to support those guys, but even the purchase of a near $2,000 lens was not enough to get the time of day. Needless to say, that was a bit hard to swallow.
Perhaps the moral code of conducting business needs to be a two way street. I am not saying that businesses are scammers by definition, but the American consumer is taking on the chin -- among other body parts -- from massive corporations all day and all night. Credit card companies are constantly dreaming up ways to hit your with more fees -- "Payment due by the March 11th, but if it gets here after 11:00 am , it is considered the 12th and you pay extra." Insurance companies seem to regularly deny coverage, assuming that you would rather just pay than fight, which apparently is true in lots of cases. And employers are bearing more of the brunt of terrible management -- just ask any auto worker or airline employee.
CompUSA (and Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City and countless others) pays meager wages to their employees, so the quality of customer service suffers. They specifically schedule people the maximum hours they can while keeping them from being considered full-time employees, thereby freeing the corporate mother ship from lots of (moral) responsibilities.
Fifty years ago, you could make a career in retail, be it Sears or even the local shoe store. It was not a job for poor young people, but a bona fide career. Today that is gone.
Modern corporate business is amoral by definition with the only goal to deliver shareholder value. This definition ignores the treatment of humans on either side of the transaction.
Wow, I have strayed way off topic. Where are the forum police when you need them to stop me?
Cheers,
Terry
