We are regularly confronted with disturbing news about our connection as individuals to various forms of wrongful harm involved in the production and trade of everyday products. Purchasing iphones, seafood or chocolate, for example, seems to involve us with practices of modern slavery or trafficking.
Wrongful harm can occur at many points in complex global production chains. Slave or bonded labour may be used to create products. Purchasers may exploit their market power to obtain components or goods at unfair prices. Alternatively, production processes may encourage or enable wrongdoing by others. For example, millions of people have died in Africa in recent decades because of conflicts directly related to the extraction and sale of minerals.
Most people claim they want to do ‘the right thing’ when confronted with these facts, yet it is far from clear what that might be. Thus, consequently many people do nothing. How should we approach this? There seem to be three broad options.
