Why is the world we live in today interested in not only the quality of goods we buy but in how those goods and services are produced?

Have you ever seen references to the internet meme “first world problems?”  I believe that we care not only about the quality of the products we buy, but about how they are produced, because we are so rich that we have the ability to do so.

In the past, we were not nearly as rich as we are now.  Before WWII, the average American did not live the sort of affluent lifestyle that we now have.  Even in the boom years after the war, the typical American did not live as well (in material terms) as we do now.  Most people did not have two cars.  Houses were much smaller than they are now.  People did not go out to eat all the time or spend their money on fancy cups of coffee products.  It is only in the last few decades (no matter how much we complain about the weak economy or rising inequality) that the vast majority of Americans have come to have so much material wealth.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow said that human beings have to have their basic needs fulfilled before they can care about other things.  Speaking of individual people, he said that a person has to have food and shelter, for example, before they can worry about things like morality. I think that the same sort of thing applies to our society as a whole.  When we were worried about having enough material goods, we were not able to care about other things.  Now, we have enough material goods.  We have the luxury of worrying about how they are made.  We have the luxury of wondering if they were made in ways that harmed the environment or exploited workers in other countries.  When we were poorer, we did not care about these things because we just wanted to fulfill our more basic needs.  Now that our basic needs are amply provided for (and have been for at least a couple of decades), we have been able to move on to thinking about things like the morality of how our goods and services are made.