@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins "I am evaluating the unethical nature of your boycott not the unethical natures of the company." <= bingo, that's the problem. If you neglect FedEx's wrong doing, of course there is no grounds for a boycott. "then that implies a company has a right to knowledge as to the contents of what your shipping in the first place" <= they always have a *right* to know what they're shipping
@realcaseyrollins @thenewoil @freemo they have an obligation to not ship cocaine, for example. How they meet their obligation to not ship prohibited items is indeed interesting. All couriers have to work out how to avoid shipping prohibited items (and when I say "prohibited" that's the union of prohibitions by law and by corp policy)
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins but until you can show that FedEx is more privacy respecting in how they avoid prohibited shipments, your privacy claim is dead.
@realcaseyrollins @thenewoil @freemo and i'm still interested in hearing how you think FedEx ships dolphins without knowing it's a dolphin.
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Huh? We werent talking about dolphins. We were talking about shark fins. Which Are in an opaque box with ice the vast majority of the time and thus unable to be identified without looking inside. Dolphins are an entierly different issue.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins if you go back to the 1st post about fedex, i said: "FedEx ships shark fins, slave dolphins, and hunting trophies".
@realcaseyrollins @thenewoil @freemo If the fins are in an opaque box then they probably would sneak through USPS and UPS, but they have to sneak that shit because those couriers don't allow them. FedEx doesn't give a shit.. you can label them shark fins, insure them for their value, and even expect FedEx to pay a claim if they get lost. FedEx serves shark fin dealers well.
No couriers routinely open boxes and x-ray them to investigate content, all courriers do. Which as I said is a violation of privacy and should be seen as unacceptable. By boycotting in such a way that not only deems those methods acceptable but encourages their use is unethical choice on your part IMO. As I've said you shouldnt be encouraging boycotts which effectively demand companies utilize their already unacceptable violation of customer privacy.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins if they are all inspecting pkgs just the same, then it's a moot point. The boycott is over what's on the list of prohibited items, not how inspections are done.
No its not all the same, you should be boycotting companies that violate customer privacy, your personal boycott is mutually exclusive to this however and in fact **encourages** and rewards this already unethical behavior.
Just to illustrate how absurd that statement was imagine this was in the past a bit before Fedex had decided to ban shark fins. Since none of the major companies banned shark fins and they all shipped it by your logic any boycotting is "a moot point".
The truth is just because all the companies act unethically to the same degree in no way makes it a moot point, in fact all the more reason you shouldn't be encouraging that unethical behavior and the violation of customer's privacy.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil if they all shipped shark fins just the same, then indeed the boycott would be moot, mostly. Exceptionally, there is sometimes the option to go without (to ship nothing), but apart from that I patronize the lesser of evils.
@thenewoil @realcaseyrollins @freemo I have dirt on all three (FedEx, UPS, & USPS). I have no dirt on Airborne Express, but they don't operate around me. So making an ethical choice means weighing those evils & avoiding the greatest evil. The only significant dirt I have on USPS is that they block Tor, which is not as harmful the other two, so USPS wins my business.
Which of the choices you go with after you weigh all the options isnt much of a concern for me, thats for you to decide.
My issues is, as I said, that having a personal policy to boycott companies that refuse to violate customer privacy and therefore will not be beholden to the contents they choose to ship, is an unethical policy to have and to apply when evaluating which company to go with.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil Again, you're still trying to play the privacy card without any proof that FedEx has less intrusive inspections, or that they would even necessarily have to modify their process to be more intrusive (hint: you can't, because they could simply add shark fins to the list without changing inspetions)
I've already explained why I dont need to, nor is it relevant, if FedEx is less intrustive or not. I will not repeat myself again.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins your whole argument hinges on the unsubstantiated claim that adding 3 items to the prohibited items list entails a privacy hit. it's a dead b/c as I said the list can be expanded with no change to inspection procedures. It's unreasonable to expect a company to break the law (to do less inspection than legally mandated). Legal pressure trumps any consumer pressure you can imagine.
No, my claim is that any policy where you demand a shipping company violate customer privacy in order to comply with your demands is one that encourages violation of privacy, perpetuates it, and makes it much more difficult for those fighting for user privacy to achieve their goals.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil when law requires a merchant to "violate customer privacy", no consumer pressure to the contrary can change that, particularly when all merchants are complying with the law to violate privacy.
There is no such law, in fact the shipping of shark fins is explicityly legal.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins wrong law. I wasn't talking about shark finning prohibitions, but laws that require couriers to violate consumer privacy.
There is no law that obligates the shipper to open up and search through customer packages.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil this proves my point. There is no privacy issue. Customers still have the same privacy expectation.
At no point has your point made sense to me, let alone been proved. It does nothing to achieve your actual goals (reduce shark fin trade) and puts pressure on companies to act unethically... its a bad point IMO
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins the shark fin trade *loves* FedEx, because they get full service no different than if they were shipping marbles. So of course BDS'ing the shark fin supply chain achieves the goal of disrupting that unethical trade.
@realcaseyrollins @thenewoil @freemo s/supply chain/distribution chain/
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins it's a gross oversight to neglect to take a boycott to the supply chains and distribution chains, because they are all elements that the bad business depends on.
@realcaseyrollins @thenewoil @freemo this is why ethics orgs typically focus on supply chains. You may be treating your workers right, but if you get raw materials from slave labor upstream, orgs like FairTrade aren't going to approve.
I really could care less what ethics orgs do or dont do, I decide my own ethics.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins sure but your not putting useful leverage behind your ethics if you choose to ignore the supply chain. It's trivial for companies to outsource to put the wrong doing under another company name.
I'm not ignoring the supply chain. I oppose the fisherman who unethically harvest the fins, the warehouse that buy and pack it, the stores that stock it, and the resteraunts that server it. All the relevant players.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil The courier is of course relevant. Simple test: remove the courier. Does this disrupt them? Of course it does. We don't boycott unknowing participants, but FedEx is known to be knowingly complicit.
Wrong. Fedex stepping out as a courier did not in fact disrupt them. In fact it had absolutely no noticable effect on shark fin sale or consumption in terms of global numbers.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins nonsense. if your distribution chain dies, you're not moving product and thus not getting paid. You have to find someone else. And if you can find someone else, the price is higher (or you would have been using the other guy in the 1st place). That means margins shrink, and the business becomes less interesting
You cant kill their distribution chain, all your doing is moving their distribution chain around to other carriers. Even if every shipping company int he world boycotted it that wouldnt stop them from shipping it overseas on their own boats (which we already know they have plenty of).
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil it's costly and disruptive to have to change couriers every time a courier ditches them. That cost cuts into the bottom line that motivates the shark finning
@thenewoil @realcaseyrollins @freemo losing fedex, UPS, national post, and airborne express is a big deal, because not just any courier is equipped to reach all parts of the world. Private service costs are much higher because of lack of competition
And yet loosing UPS had absolutely no effect on any scale on worldwide shark fin sales.. go figure.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil because of fedex, although who's to say fedex isn't charging them more. The leap after losing fedex would be a big one
Get rid of fedex then all youll have are companies stepping in to take the place. It would leave a **huge** amount of money for any shipping company up for grabs. Or again the companies will ship their own. Remember shark fin is largely limited to asian regions and they have more than enough shipping options to cover 99% of their buyer base.
Its pretty trivial when your in asia, in fact FedEx is pretty low ont he list in asia when it comes to the largest asia based shipping companies available to them.
You will find the vast majority of large imports, particularly food, does not go through fedex, ups or any of the companies you mentioned. They are generally on freighter ships and ships by companies you have never heard of.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil if those other options are cheaper, then FedEx isn't getting a piece of that business, in which case FedEx could take the moral high ground for free. But we know that's not the case b/c FedEx is getting business from them.
They are likely competitively priced and around the same
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins likely not, as fedex is orders of magnitude bigger and thus can negotiate lower bulk prices with their suppliers.
No as I covered in Asia fedex is actually quite a bit smaller than its competitors. Fedex is only much larger from a western perspective (where they do dominate), which is also the least significant part of their market.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins @thenewoil Asia fedex has the benefit of shared resources, deals, and strategic outsourcing with EU FedEx and US FedEx, a benefit the others don't have.
@thenewoil @realcaseyrollins @freemo Asia fedex also has the ability to choose where in the world they declare their profits, losses, and royalties, and has less of a tax burden as a result
A benefit of little importance to them however, EU and US are not significant markets for sharkfin, asia is. Meanwhile the much larger asian shipping companies have similar benefits geared towards their asian markets. Thus they can deliver similar benefits of superior value to any company wanting to ship shark fins.
You will find, I'm sure, that Fedex carries a very small portion of the overall quantity of shark fins shipped.
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins Asia is the destination, not necessarily the source. And the benefit of tax avoidance benefits the company worldwide (on paper, it could work for or against them in asia, but these are just shenannigans). The ability to claim royalties in netherlands or isle of mann or wherever gives the whole company an advantage over the smaller non-global competitors
@freemo @thenewoil @realcaseyrollins it's not that trivial to replace FedEx. FedEx only has two competitors for a reason. And the reason is because the investment in establishing workers and offices in cities around the world is astronomical, and the payoff for that investment shrinks as the competition increases. So shrinking competition in shark fin distribution obviously increases the price.