What It Boils Down To: Philip Morris Is Infinitely More Evil than Halliburton

OK here's just one example of the hypocrisy for me.

Folks hanging out at the independent coffee house at least in part because they have big "fair trade" problems with Starbucks.

Engage them in political conversation and you'll hear terms like "globalization," "internatonal corporations, "exploitation," "Halliburton."

Then they step outside and light up a Phillip Morris-distributed cigarette.

Two miles from that hip coffee house, or vegan restaurant, or indy bookstore, is a side street with a hospice full of folks from your town, dying of the disease that was likely implanted in them by cigarettes.

Smokers, when you bought that pack pack you are now partaking of, you unwittingly subsidized massive marketing campaigns to hook the same third worlders who they accuse American companies like Wal-Mart and Nike of operating third-world sweatshops for.

Now listen to me here:

The exploitative, cancer-promulgating, death-dealing tobacco companies you subsidize are more evil than Nike. Or Starbucks. Or Wal-Mart. Or Halliburton.

You hate these corporations for their business practices and war machine involvement but buy from one that is a lot more evil.

That's the problem for me.