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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with your analysis. The younger generation is genuinely concerned with those issues. However we live in a culture which has so long suppressed any discussion of where our products come from that no discussion of this is part of our normal lives. If younger people buy fast fashion it’s because they are young and they haven’t learned how the world fully works yet. But also young people are not a monolith and I’m sure a good percentage of the youth do understand the harms from fast fashion.

The desire to get things for cheap is deeply rooted in American and western culture and simple claims of hypocrisy don’t do justice to the pervasiveness of these ideas.

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Young people also aren't rich, and live amongst the awful rent seeking economy built by those who came before. So it's not hypocritical to want to buy cheap, it's an unfortunate necessity. Also, the whole point of the push to make sustainability a mainstream concern is so that 'all those awful young people' can afford to buy sustainably produced products. Right now, unsustainable enterprises get to externalize the environmental costs on everyone else, and thus make sustainable & quality goods extremely pricey. It's a tax on morality - so let's eliminate that first and then point fingers about hypocrisy.

>However we live in a culture which has so long suppressed any discussion of where our products come from that no discussion of this is part of our normal lives.

It's also not our jobs. If something is so destructive that I have an obligation to boycott it, it should be illegal. It's the government's job to create and enforce sensible policies to protect the innocent. That's why they take a third of my paycheck.

But they've largely abrogated that responsibility, with a lot of help from corrupt businesses. Now it's my job to ensure not too many child slaves were harmed in the making of my T-shirt.

> It's also not our jobs.

> Now it's my job

I think the reality is, it has always been up to us. Collective action is important but we need to understand when the status quo is insufficient and act accordingly. Certainly I agree government action would be very helpful here, requiring accountability and living wages, but these structures are always vulnerable to abuse by the powers that be.

People should do the right thing no matter what. "Not my job" is not a valid excuse for supporting slavery. But not everyone is equally culpable. The people who shirked their duties are worse than those who failed to pick them up.

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