Subject Heading: I'm Buying Those Nike Shoes
Dear X,
PLEASE DISREGARD ALL OF THE FOLLOWING IF YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT SMALL, STARVING, BUT VERY CUTE CHILDREN IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
I've never thought so much about buying a pair of shoes, but you set me to wondering whether buying Nikes is something I'm ethically opposed to.
That being said, I work on document retrieval at the Kresge Business Library, so it's kinda my job to find articles on business practices. So, defying the "chef's family mostly eats take-out" stereotype, I have taken my skills to use for my own purposes. After about fifteen minutes of research (that I'm getting paid for on the clock) I have come up with the following:
This is a paper by an MIT grad student and its probably the best (and most reliable) breakdown of Nike's evolving role as a more responsible business practitioner. It doesn't take long to read but it is SUPER dry and boring. If you have any interest in it, skip to section 4: "Nike's Response: Learning to Become a Global Corporate Citizen."
In early August of this year, Nike found out that a private contractor that they had hired to run a factory in Malaysia was grossly abusing human rights. They immediately shut down the factory and held a press conference to declare that they had no idea this was going on and it was put to a stop immediately. Is it Nike's responsibility to police every single company that it hires run its factories? Not really, but public pressure has MADE it their responsibility.
Most of the people who still criticize Nike are Libertarian xenophobes who don't think that anything should be manufactured outside of the United States, including chopsticks. There are also the hemp-wearing, LSD-addled, One Love people who think that all human beings and some apes should be paid a million dollars an hour to do anything until the day that all currency is replaced with fond memories of childhood. But the rest of everyone else seems to think that Nike is OK. In fact, it's somewhat insulting to Nike if I DON'T buy the shoes seeing how hard they've worked to improve their practices.
My point being this: when corporations respond to public pressure and bad publicity, and attempt to right their wrongs, public opinion needs to ease up a little bit. If everyone is relentlessly critical of Nike, then boycotts and public pressure become meaningless because the public is impossible to please.
I think I've written way too much on this, but I'm sending the email to you anyway.
-Ben
p.s. OBAMA OH EIGHT!
Author's Note: The Obama thing is a reference to an inside joke, but seriously, vote Obama.
