However, the issue is more nuanced -- what if, as a humanitarian effort, a pharmaceutical company sold recently expired drugs at very low cost to an impoverished developing nation in the grips of an epidemic? What if a food company donated food that was safe but 'past its expiration date' to a famine-stricken nation? In this case, a utilitarian calculus would support such exchanges. The balance between the benefit of being cured or not starving to death and potential harm of bad drugs or food would suggest such a donation was ethical. From a Rawlsian point-of-view, imagining whether you were the producer or the consumer, it seems likely that 'you' the consumer would take a risk of eating safe but recently stale rice to avoid starvation, much like a producer would be happy to gain good publicity and unload goods that cannot be sold in the U.S. Everyone, in short, benefits, regardless of his or her position in the exchange.
Export commodities which have the potential for misuse. Specifically, did Nestle act irresponsibly in marketing infant formula to the Third World?
It is more difficult to apply the Rawlsian veil of ignorance principle to the example of Nestle in the Third World, because the presupposition...
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