Business Ethics Export Capital for Thesis

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However, the issue is more nuanced -- what if, as a humanitarian effort, a pharmaceutical company sold recently expired drugs at very low cost to an impoverished developing nation in the grips of an epidemic? What if a food company donated food that was safe but 'past its expiration date' to a famine-stricken nation? In this case, a utilitarian calculus would support such exchanges. The balance between the benefit of being cured or not starving to death and potential harm of bad drugs or food would suggest such a donation was ethical. From a Rawlsian point-of-view, imagining whether you were the producer or the consumer, it seems likely that 'you' the consumer would take a risk of eating safe but recently stale rice to avoid starvation, much like a producer would be happy to gain good publicity and unload goods that cannot be sold in the U.S. Everyone, in short, benefits, regardless of his or her position in the exchange.

Export commodities which have the potential for misuse. Specifically, did Nestle act irresponsibly in marketing infant formula to the Third World?

It is more difficult to apply the Rawlsian veil of ignorance principle to the example of Nestle in the Third World, because the presupposition by those who condemned Nestle was that the women to whom the baby food was being marketed did not understand the benefits of breastfeeding and the dangers if they did not breastfeed their children.
The women may have welcomed the liberation from breastfeeding, but those who opposed Nestle's actions argued that Nestle was taking advantage of their ignorance. Placing one's self in the point-of-view of the woman, in other words, is difficult, given their incomplete knowledge of medical benefits of breastfeeding. A libertarian would counter that women have the right of free choice and possess knowledge about their lifestyle no Western pro-breastfeeding advocate can have -- perhaps a malnourished woman cannot produce enough milk, and wants to have the formula just in case. Perhaps a woman must work 12 hours a day and does not have the luxury of being able to breast-feed on a regular schedule. Forcing Nestle to go against its will and make the choice 'for' these women might do more harm than good, and the market, while not perfect, will yield a better ethical result than enforced intervention.

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