Woolworths saves you from math.
Oct 7– From The Journal of John Woolman (1774)
“To trade freely with oppressors without laboring to dissuade them from such unkind treatment, and to seek for gain by such traffic, tends, I believe, to make them more easy respecting their conduct than they would be if the cause of universal righteousness was humbly and firmly attended to by those in general with whom they have commerce; and that complaint of the Lord by his prophet, “They have strengthened the hands of the wicked,” hath very often revived in my mind.
I wonder how much you have to resist "humbly but firmly" for it to be effective? Humbly implies that firebombing Walmart is probably out, but is just avoiding shopping there enough? Picketing? Lobbying against letting them get zoned or something? We obviously live in a society with a lot of immoral business, but it's hard as a regular person to figure out how to best work to improve things while living your own life (besides the moral issue of how far you can go to dissuade bad businesses and still be good).
I do appreciate that Woolman looks down the supply chain. He doesn't just avoid patronaging businesses he finds immoral directly, but avoid any dealings that he perceives as coming from unfair treatment of the workers down the line. Again, not sure how practical that is for your average first world person today. I'm pretty sure this computer is made of slavery, along with my router, and so on and so forth.
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