Reference no: EM132276692

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. Business functions within a global ecological system. Because of the interrelated nature of ecosystems, and because intrusion into ecosystems frequently creates unfavorable effects, business must be sensitive to its impact on the physical environment. Traditionally, business has regarded the natural world as a free and unlimited good. Pollution and resource depletion are examples of situations in which each person’s pursuit of self-interest can make everyone worse off (the “tragedy of the commons”). Business must be sensitive to possible disparities between its private economic costs and the social costs of its activities (the problem of externalities or spillovers). Companies that attempt to be free riders in environmental matters or that refuse to address the external costs of their business activities behave unfairly. Some philosophers maintain, further, that each person has a human right to a livable environment. Pollution control has a price, and trade-offs must be made. But weighing costs and benefits involves controversial factual assessments and value judgments. Any equitable solution to the problem of who should pay must recognize that both buyers and sellers contribute to the problem, and all of us benefit from correcting it. Three methods for protecting the environment are regulations, incentives, and charges or permits for pollution. Each has advantages and disadvantages, but holding business to high environmental standards can push it to be more efficient and productive. A broader view of environmental ethics considers our obligations to those in other societies and to future generations. Some philosophers argue that we must respect the right of future generations to inherit an environment that is not seriously damaged, but talk of the rights of future people raises puzzles. Philosophers disagree about whether nature or animals have intrinsic value. Some, adopting a human-oriented point of view, contend that the environment is valuable only because human beings value it. Those adopting a naturalistic ethic believe that the value of nature is not simply a function of human interests.

Through experimentation, testing, and the production of animal products, business has a very substantial impact on the welfare of animals. The meat and animal-products industries rely on factory-farming techniques, which many describe as cruel and horrible. Because of these conditions, moral vegetarians argue that meat eating is wrong.