Fair

I'm constantly trying to pin down my value system, my morality, and give it a name.

I think it boils down to fairness. And I think I can try to describe it.

I buy organic milk, not because I *believe* in the whole organic system. I try to dry my clothing outside and not in a tumble dryer because it is wasteful to do otherwise. I prefer to cycle than drive not because it is good excercise, or more fun.

What?

Ok, case by case.

Organic is not perfect. But, especially for dairy, it guarantees certain things for the animals in question: access to the outdoors, and pasture for grazing, where possible (i.e. when it's not snowing outside), and generally non-cramped, "humane" living conditions. What I want is for the cow to have as good a life as is possible, bearing in mind that she is being harnessed for my use. I am grateful to her. The cleaner life, morally, would be to be strict vegan, I think, with no life harnessed to make mine easier. However, cattle as they exist today would not exist if we had not domesticated them.

The tumble dryer is even more straightforward for me. Why would I use money-electricity to do something the sun will do for me for little effort? I have never owned a dryer, though I can see that, in Canada, it is perhaps more necessary where the winters are long and cold... So, it is not fair to use that electricity to dry my clothes when any use of electricity impacts the environment (wind turbines need building, after all). 1kWh of electricity might dry one load of clothes, or power my computer for a couple of days.

Cycling is, you would think, obvious. Look at obesity rates. Look at the cost of roads. Look at the social cost of being able to jump in your car and drive away from the society where you live at 70mph/100km/h. The main thing for me is that it is unselfish to cycle. Drive if you need to (I probably have a strict sense of need, though: if where you are going is within cycling distance and anything you need will fit in a backpack, cycle). But don't block up the roads, create pollution, noise and generally waste a limited resource if you don't need to.

Is it exploitation to buy something and sell it on at 10x that purchase price? I believe it is. It should be illegal to make more than a certain %age as profit - dependent on industry sector, etc, etc. The organinc price markup is often as bad at this as conventional, and is a huge turn off for me. The practise of selling something at less than cost price but then charging more for accessories is similar, though there are situations where it is impossible to do otherwise (one example might be in video games - the cost of the console is subsidised at release due to the incredibly high development costs, but then games and accessories are priced to recoup that subsidy. Of course, when a company makes multi-million dollar profits, it does make you wonder.. but such is capitalism, and I digress).

It is not fair that things are forcibly made obsolete by, say, charging almost as much for a spare part than the cost of buying a new whatever. Visiting India showed how cheap labour makes old things "last longer" - the parts for one American's motorbike when it needed fixing was more than 10x the cost of the labour to fit the parts, and that's how it should be. Things should be made to be durable and fixable - because it is *fair* on the consumer, and promotes thriftiness, and reduces waste.