Reference no: EM132273186

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The complexity of today’s economy and the dependence of consumers on business increase business’s responsibility for product safety. Buyers depend on the unusual expertise of sellers to assess the quality of products because they can no longer be reasonably expected to assess the quality of merchandise on their own. The legal liability of manufacturers for injuries caused by defective products has evolved over the years. Today the courts have moved to the doctrine of strict liability , which holds the manufacturer of a product responsible for injuries suffered as a result of defects in the product, even if the manufacturer took sufficient precautions. Government agencies, such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, have broad powers to regulate product safety. Critics contend that these regulations are costly and that they prevent individuals from choosing to purchase a riskier but less expensive product. This argument touches on the controversy over legal paternalism , the doctrine that the law may justifiably be used to restrict the freedom of individuals for their own good.Although there are exceptions, regulations generally help ensure that business meets its responsibilities to consumers. Businesspeople, however, tend to favor self-regulation and government deregulation.

To increase safety, companies need to give safety the priority necessitated by the product, abandon the misconception that accidents are solely the result of consumer misuse, monitor closely the manufacturing process, review the safety implications of their marketing and advertising strategies, provide consumers with full information about product performance, and investigate consumer complaints. Some successful companies already put a premium on safety. Business also has other obligations to consumers: Product quality must live up to express and implied warranties; prices should be fair, and business should refrain from price fixing, price gouging, and manipulative pricing; and product labeling and packaging should provide clear, accurate, and adequate information. Advertising tries to persuade people to buy products. Ambiguity, the concealment of relevant facts, exaggeration, and psychological appeals are among the morally dubious techniques that advertisers use. The Federal Trade Commission protects us from blatantly deceptive advertising. But it is debatable whether the FTC should ban only advertising that is likely to deceive reasonable people or whether it should protect careless or gullible consumers as well. The FTC now seeks to prohibit advertising that misleads a significant number of consumers, regardless of whether it was reasonable for them to have been misled. Advertising to children is big business, but children are particularly susceptible to manipulative and deceptive advertising. Advertisers contend that parents still control what gets purchased and what doesn’t. However, critics doubt the fairness of selling to parents by appealing to children, Defenders of advertising view its imaginative, symbolic, and artistic content as answering real human needs. Critics maintain that advertising manipulates those needs or even creates artificial ones. John Kenneth Galbraith contends that today the same process that produces products also produces the demand for those products (the dependence effect). Galbraith argues, controversially, that advertising encourages a preoccupation with material goods and leads us to favor private consumption at the expense of meaningful personal achievement. Defenders of advertising see it as a necessary and desirable aspect of competition in a free-market system, a protected form of free speech, and a useful sponsor of the media, in particular television. Critics challenge all three claims. Justice is one important aspect of morality. Talk of justice and injustice generally involves appeals to the related notions of fairness, equality, desert, and rights. Economic or distributive justice concerns the principles appropriate for assessing society’s distribution of social benefits and burdens, particularly wealth, income, status, and power. Economic distribution might be based on pure equality, need, effort, social contribution, or merit. Each of these principles is plausible in some circumstances but not in others. In some situations, the principles pull us in different directions. Dissatisfied with a pluralistic approach, some moral philosophers have sought to develop more general theories of justice.Utilitarianism holds that the maximization of happiness ultimately determines what is just and unjust. Mill contended, more specifically, that the concept of justice identifies certain very important social utilities and that injustice involves the violation of the rights of some specific individual. Utilitarians must examine a number of factual issues in order to determine for themselves which economic system and principles will best promote social well-being or happiness. Many utilitarians favor increased worker participation and a more equal distribution of income. The libertarian theory identifies justice with liberty, which libertarians understand as living according to our own choices, free from the interference of others. They reject utilitarianism’s concern for total social well-being. The libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick defends the entitlement theory. His theory holds that the distribution of goods, money, and property is just if people are entitled to what they have—that is, if they have acquired their possessions without violating the rights of anyone else. In the Wilt Chamberlain example, Nozick argues that theories of economic justice not in accord with his theory inevitably fail to respect people’s liberty because people wouldn't be able to voluntarily transfer legitimately attained wealth as they wish. Libertarians generally operate with a distinctive concept of liberty, defend free exchange and laissez-faire markets without regard to results, put a priority on freedom over all other values, and see property rights as existing prior to any social arrangements. Critics contest each of these features of libertarianism.

John Rawls’ approach lies within the socialcontract tradition. He asks us to imagine people meeting in the “original position” to choose the basic principles that are to govern their society. Although in this original position people choose on the basis of self-interest, we are to imagine that they are rational, informed about science, and are behind a veil of ignorance (with no personal information about themselves). Rawls contends that any principles agreed to under these circumstances have a strong claim to be considered the principles of justice.

Rawls argues that people in the original position would follow the maximin rule for making decisions. They would choose principles guaranteeing that the worst that could happen to them is better than the worst that could happen to them under any rival principles. Rawls argues that they would agree on two principles. The first states that each person has a right to the most extensive scheme of liberties compatible with others having the same amount of liberty. The second principle states that to be justified, any inequalities must be to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Rawls rejects utilitarianism becauseit might permit an unfair distribution of burdens and benefits. Contrary to the entitlement theory, he argues that the primary focus of justice should be the basic social structure, not transactions between individuals. He contends that society is a cooperative project for mutual benefit and that justice requires us to reduce the social and economic consequences of arbitrary natural differences among people.