So you got a great deal on a cheap shirt – Do you know what other’s in the world had to endure for you to get ANOTHER shirt that in 2 months you’ll probably throw on the floor and never think about again because you’ve found another great deal on the horizon?
In business, entrepreneurs will often come across situations that question their ethics against their bottom line. It seems like, even when the right thing to do is obvious, entrepreneurs often coast between keeping their business ethics in line with their personal ethics; or maybe our business ethics and personal ethics have merged into what is known as our present-day materialistic ethics.
So when called upon, what will you do?
Will you give into your greed and sacrifice the conditions of others? Will you play your role down to mere survival? Or will you find a way to take less, in order to keep your business ethics in line with your personal ethics?
Do you know who you’re hiring? Where do their moral and business ethics lie?
To that account, let’s take a look at the entrepreneurs favorite friend these days called Fiverr, a site where cheap labor can be found for just about anything. I recently consulted with an entrepreneur who’d gotten a website built for a cheap low price via Fiverr. Upon evaluating the site, I found that the entrepreneur was given an old WordPress theme version and more importantly did not have a legal license certificate to use the WordPress theme that the “pakistanian” Fiverr worker had installed and built and thus would never be able to update the theme and eventually would have site issues as a result. And worse, the entrepreneur didn’t know that in participating with this particular Fiverr vendor, they had now compromised the legality of their business; not to mention that it took 5 days to finally wiggle the username and password out of the Fiverr vendor. And let’s not even get into the cheap logo that the entrepreneur did not know if they owned out right or only had rights to use.
Let’s just say, my suggestion is to get consulting and tread lightly and have caution when dealing with someone clear across the other side of the world. And more importantly, when you do, realize that low costs that are too good to be true are just that, too good to be true and that you’ve paid slave wages to someone overseas and single handedly played a part in hurting the sustainability of America’s working class.
Our business ethics, moral codes, and our money
For instance, Human B, an apparel development and production service company, recently posted an article giving the history of the garment district in New York along side statistics of “Made in America” products today and sewing contractor conditions. The article touched on long hours and low wages for immigrant workers in unsanitary and dangerous conditions along with the staggering statistics of clothes worn in the USA that are not made in USA, in an attempt to put a focus on the struggle for fair wages and conditions.
You’ll find the article to be a cry for humanity; a plea to American businesses and consumers to realize that a good deal is not always a good deal. And in continuing to participate in producing and buying the majority of low cost clothing from overseas manufacturers, that you may be having a hand in not only deteriorating the economy of America by removing jobs out of the U.S., but in crushing the human soul of another.
Furthermore, if we keep this up, the future that we think we’re building for our children, will be lost in graduates who find it hard to attain sustainable jobs so that they don’t have to return home and live with their parents . . . Oh wait, I’m sorry, we’re already there!
To read the full article from Human B, CLICK HERE.
