I know that there are times I buy products that someone only gets paid a few cents an hour to make. But at the same time, a few cents an hour in another country isn’t always a bad wage, and it buys food for their families that they otherwise couldn’t afford. Which brings us full circle. Above and beyond all else – your obligation is to your family, then you can work on the rest of the world.

As consumers, our obligation is to purchase what we will and keep our commitments. If we want to pay higher prices for some cause, that is a choice. If we have no moral issues with competitive prices, there is nothing wrong with chosing the frugal.

Advice: Certainly check all the facts before making a similar decision. With the new company, ask all of the questions important to you. (For example, this new company cannot gaurantee future commodity prices, but will they commit to beating Amerigas going forward? Ask them what enables them charge such lower prices. Inquire about their financial stability. Are they just new in your area, or are they a new company altogether? If any question on the stability, consider the problems that could occur on a switch back to the old company.

Interesting note: I own a home in rural Vermont (that I hope sells soon — I relocated to CO). My home was built brand new and the entire development was on propane. A new company came in with a great offer for natural gas — excellent in the Green state. All of this change came about after I moved, so I felt the decision is best left to any buyer (whether to use propane or natural gas and whether to incur the issues with switching the tank). It’s interesting. Our HOA leaders believed everyone would switch to natural gas, but only 30% of the neighborhood did (which makes things really confusing). When pondering such changes, just imagine the heating bills in VT. Although the homes in the development were energy certified and brand new, the winters are quite harsh (can get to 20F below plus wind-chill). Heating choices are definitely a major decision.

It’s a competitive market. The company needs to focus on the bottom line these days, sad as that may be for workers. And, if Amerigas can’t lower their costs because they want to treat employees well than they should look for other ways to lower their costs to offer a more competitive price. I’d give the new company a chance.

Your example is a perfect example of this. “Pornography” harms no one. Viewing it harms no one. Yet the religious, who by definition deny reason, evidence, and objective reality, claim that the existence of that which is chosen voluntarily and provides great pleasure is a harm. So we see that the problem is one of intellectually dishonesty on the part of the religious person who makes such a claim, specifically the logical error of equivocation where they define “harm” to be “anything which does not promote what I want to promote” or perhaps more accurately “anything which gives any person any pleasure.” The choice to enter the store, or to enjoy “pornography” is the choice of the individual. To even begin to get close to making any case for potential harm you would have to show that the store owner or her representatives FORCED the material upon the individual, and even then you would still have the problem of demonstrating actual harm.

There are five basic harms, all objectively verifiable and into which all actual harms fall. These are Death, disability (removing ability), pain, loss of freedom, loss of pleasure. Notice that failure to provide pleasure (such as pleasing the religious zealot who hates the human form) is not a harm as it does not deny pleasure only refrains from granting a pleasure. This is a not very subtle difference many folks overlook so as to promote their own desires as being “morally” obligatory.

Ignorance may or may not be a justified exception depending on the particulars, but that does not make it subjective. Willful ignorance may not even be immoral, though it certainly can lead to immoral actions.

As for politicians votes, they are all immoral for the only power of government is first to harm the innocent. This requires a longer explanation, but as a short one, consider that government cannot take any action without first committing the act of theft.

As for the corporation and charitable pay, notice that your explanation does delve into grey areas, but does not deal with the situation at hand to which I was commenting. If as is necessitated by the claims of the Amerigas rep, Amerigas is paying a charity wage rather than a sufficient wage, then they are acting against the interests of the shareholders in what is clearly a central example of violating this law.

BTW I am not commenting in this context about the reasonableness or justification of this law, only noting that under the law as it exists, if what the rep claims is true is in fact true, then Amerigas is wide open for being sued by the shareholders under the law.

But “actual harm” can be subjective. All actions, to some degree, have both good and bad consequences eventually. Then throw in personal responsibility, the possibility of supernatural punishment, and all of a sudden one person says, “I’m just providing a desired service that does no harm to anyone”, and another says, “That porno store corrupted my son and split our family!”

Also, while one might not be immoral for doing harm unintentionally, I believe that failing to reasonably consider one’s actions may be immoral — and certainly staying intentionally ignorant of what one can be reasonably expected to know to avoid responsibility is immoral in my book. For example, if a politician votes for a bill without taking a reasonable amount of time to READ it or become otherwise informed about it’s nature, then they are still being immoral if that bill is clearly harmful. (Though, try to define “reasonable” and “clearly” — I certainly won’t even attempt it here. Again, subjective.)

“Any such corporation which pays a sum greater than the value of the work, as is necessitated by the claims of the Amerigas representative, is failing on a fundamental level to maximize shareholder return and thus clearly violating the law.”

Not necessarily so clear. How do you value someone’s work? Is it just market price? But how do you know that those cheaper replacements would truly be as good workers? There is something to be said about retaining good employees and that’s harder to measure. Furthermore, ‘overpaying’ employees might not necessarily fail to maximize shareholder return if it might be shown that it benefits the company financially — for example, if a company makes more because they have a ‘feel good’ brand and ‘free advertising’ due to being well known as a ‘good place to work’. Furthermore, such places may likely attract more talented individuals, another benefit for the company. Again, all hard to measure, but a strong possibility in some cases.