Speaker 1: Let's go. Why don't we go next to ya'll or ya'll from Ontario,
Canada, our friendly neighbors to the north? What's going on? Is it ya'll?
Speaker 3: Is it? You can. Speaker 1: Hear me? Yeah, I can hear you fine.
Speaker 3: My question is, do you think it's possible to be an ethical consumer,
today's globalized society? Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I've
got you. It wasn't you who called with this exact same question, like, a month ago, right? No, no,
it was okay. Yeah. So. Okay, here's. Here's the thing. Let's assume the answer is no. You can't
be an ethical consumer in this society then. Then what do we do? What's what do we do based
on that? If that were the answer, just indulge me for a moment. Let's say I said, you know,
yo, yo, Al, you can't be an ethical consumer right now. Nope. What would what would you do?
Speaker 3: Are you asking me personally? Yeah, I guess you have to just kind of do the best you
can. That's why I'm asking you, really is because, like, for example, the World Cup was on recently.
Yep. And initially I was going to boycott it out of, obviously, the human rights violations. Yeah.
Migrant workers dying or whatnot. But then I realized my hypocrisy was, for example,
if I go to England or Germany or whatever, those World Cups and those leagues still
sponsor sponsors from Nike and Adidas and other companies that still exploit workers and in
China and in Bangladesh and whatnot. Right. So it almost seems like no matter what I do.
I mean, I'm in. I'm just being a hypocrite. You know? Yeah. I'm choosing
what I think is personally important to me. Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're saying.
This is the difficulty. And we've we need to find the balance between living completely off the grid
and isolating yourself from all of these things, which almost none of us are willing to do. I mean,
almost literally, no one is willing to do that or doing the best we can to both make decisions.
We feel okay doesn't we don't have to feel great, but we feel like we can accept the decisions we're
making and where we think things are not right. Doing what we can as activists to effect change.
So at the end of the day, I mean, you make a good point. I covered for a decade leading up to the
Qatar World Cup. There was corruption in how Qatar got the World Cup, horrible treatment of what are
essentially slaves, building the stadiums, deaths and cover up of the deaths. Promises made by the
Qataris about kosher food and LGBT people and all these things that they went back to all this
different stuff and I covered it all along. And then we get to the games. At this point,
the cake is baked. And I want to see Argentina. You know, I was born in Argentina. I want to see
if Argentina wins and Argentina won. And it was a, you know, great thing. Where is the balance?
Do I feel okay enough with the fact that after a decade of talking about how horrible it was,
I watched a couple of games. You know, I do. I'm okay with it in the grand scheme of my life. And
everybody has to kind of decide for themselves. Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of feel like in a sense,
it's almost too much for an individual to take the burden. Trying to boycott every little thing, that
kind of thing. It relies more so on us turning to international organizations, the kind of.
Place better restrictions on where, you know, for example, like
a lot of cobalt comes from slave mines in the Congo. Yes. Too much of a burden for me to boycott
all rechargeable batteries because it's just not a good life to live. Right. I think it relies more
so on the U.N. and international bodies to sort of act in our favor, try and orchestrate some way
where it's reasonable for me to be an ethical consumer. It's done on. You can just sort of.
Boycott every little thing because that would just make my life miserable.
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I also think that as activists and voters,
we need to demand of those organizations that they actually do the things you're
talking about. You know, so so there's really an element of all of these things. But I think
you're thinking about this roughly the way I am. Speaker 3: Right. Yeah. Just because I've just
it made me feel bad kind of initially watching the World Cup. But then I just realized that,
like, it's just too much of a burden for one person to put on their shoulders to
try and boycott every little thing that's wrong about the world raised by a globalized economy.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean we give up and it doesn't mean we don't care. Yeah, I appreciate
the call you. Well, thank you. Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right. There is Joel from Ontario. Great to hear from him. Very, very exciting stuff.