Again, it's about voluntary exchange. Imagine if someone did that to you? I worked low wage jobs before. If some do gooder started lecturing me about how I'm being exploited I would rightly tell them to f off. If they wanted to throw me some money I may or may not be appreciative but I have autonomy about my choices and I extend that same belief to others
"artists deserve to be exploited because they chose it." Thats a very childish assessment of the music industry and how artists are taken advantage of. It has absolutely nothing to do with "being lectured by 'do-gooders'" either, you're injecting an emotional story as an argument where there is none.
Yea, a lot of the "it's a contract" and "it's voluntary" arguments fail to recognize the huge power imbalance between a label and a band, or any agreement between a single person and a huge company. These agreements are almost never between equals, and are often one-sided and "take it or leave it".
Yes, technically I voluntarily entered into my contract with my ISP, my cell phone carrier, and my employer. But in all cases, it's obvious I'm getting screwed over because of the massive power imbalance. It's a fact of life, but it should at least be acknowledged.
Off the top of my head....
-How was the labor sourced for those services?
-Child Labor, illegal immigrant labor?
-What are the working conditions for the labor?, is it sweatshop
-what inputs go into the goods/services?
-what do they do with their waste?
-where do the inputs come from? My country, another country, my town, a town in my state...
you may think the government plays a role to enforce some of these, and they do to a point...
You can go on in your own head about all the things behind that simple exchange of money for something. If it's a perfectly competitive market sure, that may work but there aren't many if any markets in the US that are that level of competitive.
A personal anecdote for you. My uncle owns an auto parts re-manufacturer, so they rebuild car parts and sell them. I worked there a lot growing up. The normal input is buying "cores" from service stations....your starter motor isn't working and you get a new one, that old one is sold to someone like my uncle who refurbs it.
Often we had people come by with very clearly stolen parts....should we have just exchanged money for those? This ranged from a tweaker who would show up with one part, to full scale organized theft rings with pallets of parts...
So, do we buy those since the price is much, much better? There is a an ethical decision there...
I'm curious, do you personally buy any goods or services? It seems like the logical conclusion to this kind of thinking is to just not ever purchase or use anything.
I'm curious, do you personally make any decisions? It seems like the logical conclusion to this kind of thinking is to just not ever consider or decide upon anything.
I do make decisions and often times people many degrees removed get hurt or exploited as a result of it.
I choose not to focus on that though, whereas the person I replied to apparently does. I was curious how such a person manages to live a just life in the modern world.
I think it’s more of a function of mental leisure time. People like worrying about these things and wrapping up simple transactions (“I’d like to stream music this month for $10”) into some moral and ethical quandary as if they can resolve or contribute to an existing relationship between two other parties.
It’s nice that we have the luxury to think about these things. But for the most part, I ignore it and discount people who bring it up to other people, unless they genuinely think people aren’t aware of the situation.
Maybe it’s guilt over benefiting from this. Maybe it’s just internet points for demonstrating one’s knowledge and virtue. Beats me, I hope it reduces.
To me this reads the same as "I can't be bothered to consider ethics for every economic transaction I participate in".
I'm not sure its possible to do it 100% of the time, but I try to constantly consider it.