You said you would rather we not help them so they can learn to help themselves, but that takes years and millions would die of preventable causes between now and then. A side-effect you think is fully acceptable.

Are you even hearing yourself? I'm talking about vaccines and access to fresh water. You know, the right to what is considered basic medical care, and clean water is the only thing humans cannot live without?

Or, since most of the western world's problems are WAY less of an issue than say, 29,000 children under 5 years old dying from preventable things EVERY. DAY., maybe we should keep providing free vaccines and wells and education regarding sanitation and more productive farming methods that are still natural and…

You didn't say it had thousands of different ingredients, you just said to multiply it by a lot, which would need a really big bowl but is otherwise still a cake.

I've bought all my clothes from the Salvation Army or Value Village since I was in high school. Some of my clothes are gifts from other people, and those aren't secondhand, but everything I've bought myself has been.

Your whole claim that you can't buy clothes ethically is based on the idea that buying secondhand slave-labour clothes is the same as firsthand slave labour clothes. The money from secondhand clothes doesn't go to the companies running the slave labour, therefore it doesn't support them. Stop trying to justify your…

Oh please, I don't need your snark. I'm not under any impression that this is new. I absolutely will blame people who shop there (myself included) for "continuing the status quo", as you said in your original post, because that is literally what shopping there is doing. If all young people really shopped on Etsy,…

Um....Yeah actually. I bake frequently and most reasonable people with any experience at all would identify what is going wrong and add ingredients that will fix the problem. It's not even hard. If it's too runny you add more sugar+flour, if it's too thick you add more egg or some milk or oil or water. If it's not…

There are two problems: one is this bullshit idea that if you don't fix/address every single related issue at the exact same time, you're a poser/hypocrite. There's nothing wrong with focus. The second is that nobody is perfectly consistent. It's not all or nothing.

That's a pretty accurate summation of what a lot of folks struggle with ideologically. Personally, I do what I can and try to be as socially accountable as I can. If I participate in something marginal, I acknowledge it, I don't make excuses for myself, and I don't let others shame for not having the same threshold…

I feel you but I worry that we're letting perfect be the enemy of the good. Nobody is perfect or perfectly consistent. Hypocrisy is an inextricable part of being human.

I hear this reasoning fairly often and it puzzles me. Activism doesn't come from privilege, it comes from necessity, often from those who are poor and powerless. Maybe it's the traditions I grew up with, but for my parents' generation, you joined the fight because the injustices were immediate and real and I carried…

Re: your first paragraph, that's how the system was designed to work. They aren't going to let the 60s happen again.

I'll tell you why I stopped caring - or, more accurately stop being active about my politics (because I still care). I used to protest and design petitions and lobby for my high school and university to divest from sweatshop clothing producers (I'm in my 30s if that gives you an idea of my generation) but the more I…

What a cynical view... do you really think that people working 60+ hours/week in sweatshops in lower-income countries have the education, the political voice and, most of all, the time to lobby their governments and get involved in activism?

89% of Americans want gun control yet nothing has happened because the NRA is too powerful, it is hard too revolt against something that is so powerful.

Capitalism 101.

College kids are in more debt than ever and debt has made it difficult for students to be politically active. I think this is why we see a lot of activism on the internet. Sure, you can't go to the nearest rally or afford a humane brand of clothing, but you can become more aware of and inform others of the issues so…

Clown answer bro

Another reason: phones. If you were to get all huffy about a cheap T-shirt made in Bangladesh, then you have to hate Apple, too. The cognitive dissonance proved too hard, I'd wager.