Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
I think it makes sense to discuss the individual issues, as we do on Mobileread. But I wouldn't want to give much attention to these overall scores, which are based on about thirty different sub-items. For each one of those, I may or may not have the same perspective as EthicalConsumer.org.
It's true that the web site lets you can change the emphasis of different subitems. But, even with that, their interpretation may be quite different than mine. For example, I rate how employees are treated as very importatnt -- but I look at it in comparison to how other workers are treated in the same country, even if the country is low-wage. Someone else might think that having lots of US employees is a plus.
Looking through the subitems, I see little concerning how customers are treated, such as whether customer services reps are honest and responsive, and nothing on antitrust concerns. I personally agree with their implicit idea that, from an ethical standpoint, how you treat your workers is more important than how you take care of customers. But I think opinions like that are better brought out in open discussion than hidden in a numeric rating process.
Also, the Ethical Shopping Guide price of £29.95 per year is a bit steep for me.
What about Ethical Shopping Guide itself? Based on this web page, I rate them low when it comes to ethical treatment of people who do their work:
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/about...kingforus.aspx |
To the first and second bold:
Yes, we can have different perspectives, but this web site provides a point of departure in terms of information. I find it absolutely impossible, as an individual, to research issues such as tax avoidance, supplier chains, and workers' rights on all the products that I consume on a daily/ weekly/ yearly basis. So I find these kind of sites quite valuable as a basis for information, and then you can dig deeper into the information they have and make your own choices. Their ratings are explained in more details here
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/shopp...alratings.aspx
Personally, I think the ratings provide a good point of departure, and I like the fact that they apply the same indeces to all products for consistency, even though they're not always relevant. I agree it doesn't provide the whole picture, but I find it useful for a point of departure and for general level comparisons. Then you can dig deeper as you want.
To the third bold:
What I see on that page, is not information about how they treat their employees, but how they treat people who would like to volunteer for them. Volunteering is just that - voluntary - and for voluntary work I think those conditions are decent. I've volunteered quite a few places and no one has ever paid my lunch and travel expenses on a regular basis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
I don't see that you have any evidence to back up that claim. The data is behind a paywall so it might as well not exist.
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If you email me on iexpand at gmx.com, I'll send you the report. I haven't read it yet, but downloaded it for 3 dollars.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robko
What's really interesting is that if you play with the sliders to the right, it's the "ANIMALS" category that's really dropping the Amazon rating down (including the Factory Farming sub-category, which I wasn't aware that Amazon was involved in  ). Playing with the sliders wouldn't give me a lot of confidence in the data backing up their rankings. Making animal the most important and all others not important Amazon gets an 8 and all the others get a 14 out of 20. I'm not really an Amazon fan, but in a quick look at the available parts of this site I question their biases. |
If I put 'Animals' at least important and everything else at most important, I still get a score 0 for Kindle.
I'm not an 'Amazon fan' either, but I've purchased lots of books from them and have a Kindle Touch and a Paperwhite. Over the past year, though, I've read so much bad press about them, in a whole range of news outlets, that I'm considering diversifying my purchases a bit more. I'd rather pay a bit more for my books, and buy less of them (as I can access tons of ebooks from my local library for free), if it means supporting businesses that I'm more aligned with in terms of ethical conduct. But I haven't settled on what the best alternatives are. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.