: You surely are also not interested in supporting human rights abuses, yet you would also likely deny that PepsiCo was supporting just that (thanks to consumers' dollars) in Burma (Myanmar) until boycott pressures "forced" them to withdraw their support of a repressive military regime.You are correct about not wishing to endorse violations of human rights but incorrect in supposing I'd deny Pepsi is guilty of that. Human rights is actually far more sensitive an issue for me than animal rights, however, another topic and another time.
: Your insistance that the criticisms come merely because of Pepsi's corporate status is yet another example of the eagerness of citizens of industrialized nations to deny the impact that their consumer dollars have.
Yes but I have noticed among persons a certain perhaps ungrounded mistrust of larger, powerful bodies of any sort. Be they governments, churches, multinationals, or civil movements... once they're large people begin to feel threatened by them. Some of the attacks on corporations by my reasoning therefore have to be at least in part fed by such fears.
: It is no coincidence that boycotts tend to be against large corporations. Obviously, if you want a corporation to change its policies it takes a lot more concentrated consumer pressure than it would take to have "Mom 'n' Pop's Deli Corner Store" change theirs. Also, the Moms and Pops of this world tend to be a little more ethical in their dealings, because their customers know their practices, and they themselves are not removed from the consequences of their actions by 27 rungs of corporate america like your average multinational is.
Understood, and well put.
: Pepsi supports sports like rodeo and bull fights for one reason: money. Namely, yours and mine. And those sports prosper for one reason: money. Namely, corporate money, which in turn originated in your wallet and mine.
So Pepsi supports rodeo because Cynic goes to the rodeo (not really, but assume) and wants Pepsi and there are many like Cynic who desire Pepsi at said rodeo. And the rodeo guys are able to keep putting on rodeos because Cynic's money and Pepsi's money add up to a pretty profitable sum. But if Cynic doesn't go to the rodeo and still buys Pepsi he ends up contributing to the rodeo inadvertently because granted... there's some guy with a drawl and tight jeans that will attend in his place.
Anyhow wouldn't it be just as productive to preach against bullfighting as to preach against Pepsi? If nobody liked bullfighting Pepsi wouldn't either, because there'd cease to be any sense or profit in it.
: To deny these connections is immoral (if, in this case, you consider animal torture immoral, or if, in the case of Nike and Shell for example, you consider human rights abuses immoral), self-serving, and lazy. It's also, speaking frankly, despicable when someone actually makes the EFFORT to convince people otherwise.
Again. It seems to me the problem can be solved more easily by fighting the detestable glorification of animal torture called bullfighting than fighting the company only endorsing it because it's convenient.
: Using another example, two hundred years ago, would you say the same things about those who opposed the slave trade?
Likely not. But the analogy doesn't fit. If SHARK = the Abolitionists and the Bullfighters = the Slave traders then Pepsi would be something else. Preventing select sea captains, for example, from transporting slaves would have doubtful impact on the slave trade industry. There's always someone who'd get around that. Why not attack the problem at the source?
I'll boycott bullfighting, but leave Pepsi alone. On bullfighting grounds anyway. I'm willing to listen to other reasons I should hate them, but SHARK's excuse has for me fallen short.
None.
