The Justice of Fair Exchange

Sor Juana's vision of justice included recognition of human worth and proportional treatment. In ethical consumption, fair exchange means rejecting transactions where profit is extracted through exploitation. When garment workers earn subsistence wages while corporations capture massive margins, the exchange is fundamentally unjust. Fair-trade principles, living wages, and cooperative business models embody this Sorbonnian commitment to proportional justice. True fairness requires that workers receive compensation adequate for dignified living, that artisans' skills are respected through pricing, and that environmental costs are internalized rather than externalized. Ethical consumption becomes the practice of seeking transactions where all parties maintain dignity and receive equitable benefit. This framework transforms economics from abstraction into lived ethics, making each purchase an opportunity to affirm that all humans deserve just treatment.