@aidan,
aidan wrote:
Quote:I work weird hours and I drink a lot of coffee and energy drinks. I found out that the rabid talk show conservative Michael Savage is one of the owners of the Rockstar energy drink company. He spouts all sort of hateful speech towards homosexuals. Upon learning this, I decided that I no longer wanted to drink that energy drink. That's my right as a customer. I do not have the right to light up torches and march on his doorstep and demand a refund for all the Rockstar Energy Drinks I drank prior to learning this association. Further, when I bought those drinks, I wasn't cheated either. Was it unfair that I wasn't told that buying Rockstar energy drinks went to support a man like Savage? No. All was fair, and I wasn't cheated. I paid the price for the product I wanted then. I very well could have learned of the association and decided to continue to drink those drinks
Right, but did he put a little rainbow flag on the label so you'd think that he was pro gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights when in fact he wasn't?
Doesn't matter. I still wouldn't be entitled to a refund. The gay things was only one of many things I don't like about Savage. The mistake you're making here is that the product that is sold exists because there is a demand for it. That woman wasn't the only person selling merchandise that day, and her chances were exactly the same at selling her "Nobama" pin as the next person selling their "Nobama" button.
If I am a person who sells novelty buttons with a political message, should I try hard to get people to buy my button or not?
She brought a product that people wanted, and sold it at a price they found acceptable.
aidan wrote:
If you can't see the difference in the two scenarios - maybe you're not so much smarter than those of us who you don't think understand the concept of a patently deceptive and dishonest business transaction - which I call 'cheating'. You can call it whatever you want.
But I'm sure as hell glad you're not teaching courses in the study of business ethics.
Call it cheating aidan. I won't nitpick your use of a very well understood term.
Deceptive, I'll give you.
Dishonest, I'll give you.
The customer wasn't making a donation remember. They were exchanging cash for a good. It would have been unethical if the woman had pretended to be a fundraiser. She didn't. She sold a product.
Just like the Redbull girls. Who knows if they even like Redbull. It's in their interest to sell their product to the customer though.
aidan wrote:
Laughing at people getting suckered (even if they're republicans) is reprehensible.
Suckered? How were they suckered? Did they NOT GET EXACTLY what they wanted? Did the product malfunction? Was it of poor quality?
aidan wrote:
It's exactly why my father, who was a very successful business man, retired at the age of 56. He'd made enough to take care of himself and my mother for the rest of their lives and he could no longer function in the world of business where he said, there was less and less integrity and ethical lines that wouldn't have been crossed or even toed in the past were being obliterated. This was twenty years ago. And look where we are now.
The joke was the lady, but here is the punchline. Your father I wager believed in providing people with a quality product that they wanted. When your father retired it was in a time of massive deregulation and corporate carte blanche (Reagan and Bush) in that era, we started to see the shift from the customer having the power to a system where the business has the power because the business gets to control the market and gets to tell you what you want.
You may not like that this woman capitalized on a demand. Is there a principle of business ethics that says that the conservatives were privileged/entitled to capitalizing on that specific demand?
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