The Morality of Consumption, Part 2

A common example of consumption

       Any transaction has two effects on those involved; the benefits, and the costs. For our purposes, I will consider a use of wealth to be immoral if the costs, to the natural world and to society, outweigh the benefits, to the buyer, the seller, and to society; If the buyer is inflicting a net harm. I will ignore the cost to the buyer and the seller, because it is assumed that the benefit to both outweighs the cost, or the transaction wouldn't have occurred. The most obvious benefit of the purchase of an object is the increased happiness of the buyer. However, the purchase of an object also benefits the seller, who now has more wealth at his or her disposal. The seller could, with that wealth, buy another object, increasing his happiness and the wealth of the new seller, and so on. It has often been said that consumer spending is the main driver of the American economy; every time something is bought, it has a ripple effect of benefits to the society as a whole. Finally, the identity of the seller can have affect the benefit of the transaction. If the seller is impoverished or finacially lacking, the money he acquires from the transaction will be have a much greater positive impact than if the seller is Walmart, for instance.
       The production and sale of material objects comes at a cost as well. Every object created by humans comes at a cost to the natural world. The raw materials were taken from nature at some point, and their removal and transformation into a finished good invariably damages nature to some degree. Any pollution caused by the extraction and manufacturing process can have an negative effect on public health, a cost to society.
       The effects of consumption are complicated, and vary greatly depending on what the material good is. According to the guidelines I set out, whether or not consumption is moral depends on what is consumed. For instance, purchasing a reed mat from a local vendor when on a trip to South America would definitely be a moral form of consumption, since the cost to the environment is almost nil, and the benefit to the vendor, who most likely has a low income, is so great. A private jet, by comparison, has huge costs to the environment with small benefits to the purchaser. The jet was made using metal that had to be mined, and manufacturing required use of large quantities of electricity, which was probably generated by burning coal, which also had to be mined. Every step of the creation of the jet came at a cost to both the world, and to public health because of pollution. All these costs result in the benefit of being able to avoid flying commercially. Because the costs are so high, I would consider purchasing a private jet immoral.
       Of course, most day to day purchases fall somewhere between these two extremes. It would be impossible to answer the question definitively for every different object one could consume, but it seems to me that as long as an object is not needlessly extravagant or costly, and as long as the buyer does enjoy the object, in most cases the benefits will be greater than the costs.
       Some costs of consumption, however, can't be linked to individual purchases. For example, consumption that is greater than a person's income can severely harm the overall economy. The current economic problems were partially caused by people taking out mortgages that they couldn't afford to repay. When they defaulted en-masse, it caused great damage, and contributed to the broader financial crisis. The problem is, a single home owner who consumed beyond his means can't be blamed for the broader crisis. It was only when many people made the same mistakes that the true cost was revealed. For that reason, it would be difficult to account for that sort of cost on a purchase to purchase basis.
       Another way to answer the question would be to ask whether the money you spend could have a greater benefit if it was spent another way. Would it be moral, for instance, to buy a expensive car instead of a normal car, and donating the rest of the money to a local soup kitchen? One could argue that you are choosing not to feed the hungry, and are therefore responsible for their condition. Believing in this principle, however, raises difficult questions. Would it be immoral to buy any food other than rice, on the grounds that the extra money you spend on better food could better be spent on charity? The question of whether one should be held responsible for inaction, in this case failing to spend his or her money on the more needy, is too complicated to be adressed in this post.
       I hope my analysis of the question was convincing. I didn't intend for the post to be this long, but it just sort of kept growing. Please let me know if you think any section is redundant, so I can edit for readability.
      
Image Credit: http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/September08/Features/ObesityCountries.htm
Obama Quote Source: http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/173238/20110702/obama-ending-tax-breaks-required-to-cut-deficit.htm