10 Examples of Everyday Evil

Discovery Channel:

Consumer Wickedness

We live in a consumerist culture that equates possessions with happiness. But where do they all come from?

Bangladesh’s garment workers, for one, who produce clothing for companies such as Gap and Levi-Strauss at a rate of 21 cents per hour [source: Richardson]. In March 2010, more than 20 workers in a Bangladeshi factory were killed in a fire due to poor safety standards [source: Hickman].

If workers want more money, they can choose to work at a place such as Jordan’s Classic Fashion factory for 61 cents an hour making clothes for Wal-Mart, Hanes, Kohl’s, Target and Macy’s, but the risks are rampant sexual abuse, rape, torture, beatings and deportation [source: Kernaghan].

We purchase products that we know may have come from places that dehumanize their workers through mechanisms of motivated moral disengagement, according to Neeru Paharia and Rohit Deshpande of Harvard Business School [source: Paharia and Deshpande]. In the context of our desire for a product, we rationalize our choices in a way that enables us to keep a positive view of ourselves while engaging in behavior that we would otherwise rationally view as unethical.

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