1. Producing products in Third World factories is cheaper than doing so in factories closer to the markets it serves. This is because of wage and related costs, so no CSR standards can overcome the inherent inequality in those relationships. If Nike cared about doing the right thing it would make gym shoes in Maine (or something), but that would never happen.

2. Shipping products around the world, which is probably one of the most environmentally wasteful/damaging activities any company can do. Add to the fact that lax enviro polices are usually a factor that keeps production at far-away plants so cheap and you get a picture of a very unsustainably responsible business view.

3. So do Nike employees (not to mention all of the outsourced people who don’t qualify for the label) get better health care, wages, on-the-job support services than the competition? No number of partnerships with special interest or single-issue pressure groups erases the simple fact that doing the right thing is about business practice, not how Nike chooses to narrate it.

I know this sounds negative and perhaps Nike has been very successful at convincing its consumers that it cares about doing the right thing. But it seems to me that the right thing is synonymous with telling people just about anything in order to get them to buy stuff. Ultimately, that’s not a particularly sustainable strategy.