WIPS

Ethical consumption is having a moment. It is now easier than it’s ever been to link up with other consumers, to share information, to organize together, and to communicate directly with public figures and corporations. Of course, this accretion of consumer activism rests on the assumption that ethical consumption really is, well, ethical. Waheed Hussain (2012) argues this is a mistake. Ethical consumption, he claims, is frequently incompatible with our democratic values and subversive to our liberal democratic social order. And when it is, it is morally objectionable. In this paper, I aim to defend the conventional wisdom from Hussain’s objection. Consumers really do have broad permissions to consume for moral reasons.