I read parent's comments more as a counter argument to the suggestion more people would be vegetarian if they had to kill their own animals for food, not a moral justification based on "people used to do it".
I read it as both, especially given the "I'm a hunter and hunting is great" bit. It is moral psychology. There is an implicit notion of what it means to be a human, and what is ethically sound is tied up with it, because it is universal, beyond time and place, and thus normal and good.
In this particular ethical issue it is an eternal tug-of-war between humans as essentially vegans by nature, corrupted by cloaking animal suffering in neat, pre-slaughtered packages (if we would only see...), and the other side presenting humans as one of the animals eating other animals. We are made out to be part of a natural order as hunter and butcher, which is both normal and good. Modern sensibilities around animal suffering is seen as a whimsy aberration of normality, artificial and unnatural. It is both descriptive and normative, and the what-is functions as a tool for the what-should.
This does lead to pretty bad 'science' (on both sides, really) and conversations that are very loaded around basic facts. I would agree if you would say the what-is does not depend on the what-should-be and vice versa, free will and all, but this is often not how ethical conversations (and rhetoric) works.
Here in the Netherlands more and more companies (particularly small and young companies) will actually just measure output (vs just say they do as long as you warm your chair 40 hours a week). So they don't think me working less is better, but they also don't care as long as my work is done.
The irony here is that "40 hour week of 'productive' work" is also gamed/wrong...
I think, given the right culture, other measures might work well. Not perhaps for a bonus structure, but for helping employees honestly evaluate how they're doing.
i have a similar situation, used to game a lot of friends, lots of us have kids now, would like to game 3-4 times a year. Dont want to bother getting a full on game setup, and I have a macbook for daily use, so not very gaming friendly. Decent streaming setup would be perfect.
That's awesome! I'm working for https://fairbee.com , a Dutch startup that's trying to get more attention to these kinds of brands, there's a bunch of (Dutch and international) companies trying to do better :)
Thanks for the NPO tip: definitely going to watch it :)
Great, I'll definitely have a look next time I need something. Is there also some kind of label for these ethical clothes? I'm ok with trusting small shops and I understand it might cost them money (perhaps better spend otherwise) to get a label and labels aren't everything, but still...
Edit: Are there also brands specifically aiming at quality? So that denim pants just last a lot longer for example? Paying more feels even better if I'm really buying quality. The Skot polo I bought seems to be really good fabric and well made, they also touted that, that really adds a lot to the whole value proposition, for me.
Another edit: This is also a nice initiative which could perhaps be leveraged more, specifically by ethical companies: [0]
We use Good On You for the bigger brands, they do audits based on a couple criteria. There are a bunch of different certificates some of which are a bit of a farce, seeing through the green washing can be pretty hard.
If you'd like to have a longer conversation about this, feel free to contact me at arjan [at] fairbee.com
I have 3 skot polos too, their under shirts are great as well. Build quality is def something we try to look at, the kuyichi pants i have for instance feel way more robustly built than g-star pants for instance.
We're also looking at different ways to ship, especially the last mile, trying to use electric cargo bikes instead of vans, and bundling packages across other shops as well via izipack for instance.
edit: one thing about the quality we're running into is it's hard to get across online how different the hoodies we have (from Athrty for example) look from the hoodies you'd buy at H&M for instance. As soon as you have them in your hands you can tell the difference, but on pictures that's way less apparent.
I have a large number of under shirts as well, I actually give them as gifts sometimes, I like them so much (nice feel + deep v-neck is super nice), never came across something like that in normal stores (but again, I hate spending too much time in fashion stores :p).
I was considering a fitbit because of this, i like my mechanical watches too much. Think that might work on my other wrist, while still wearing my regular watches.
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