Earlier quoted context omitted.
> prevalence indicates the customers appreciate their presence Focusing solely on consumers ignores negative externalities. There are many situations in which cost benefits from such externalities (slavery, pollution, human rights abuses, animal mistreatment) can lead to a favorable marketplace position vs competitors who do not exploit such externalities. What is more, many of these exploits (slavery, pollution, hum…
I don't think the poster used legality as the moral compass, rather, consumer choice was the moral compass. If consumers lack the moral conciousness on their day to day transactions, then how can we expect them to make the right moral choices when they vote?
A more topical one might be if you disagree with a company using sweatshop labor. Figuring out which companies engage in sweatshop labor and avoiding them is a remarkably difficult task, not in the least because companies do whatever they can in order to hide said actions. And even if you do manage to create a list of good/bad companies, there's no guarantee that you can purchase solely from the good companies without having to go through some other morally dubious medium such as Amazon.
The idea of shopping based on your moral conscious might've worked 50 years ago when the supply chain was far smaller, but nowadays it's so complex as to be almost unfathomable for one user to shop their moral compass without touching at least one thing they disagree with.