Buyer Beware, Seller Be Honest: The Ethics of the Marketplace

“Buyer beware.” It’s a worldview born of that same ethos that proudly declares, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

On the surface, it’s about taking personal responsibility—owning your choices as a consumer in a complex world. But if you listen closely, you can almost hear the smug whisper beneath it: “A fool and his money soon will part.”

Now, I’m a believer in radical responsibility—the idea that embracing our agency frees us from the despair of helplessness. But personal agency only works when it’s balanced with reciprocity: the understanding that we treat others as we wish to be treated. That’s the Golden Rule. It’s what allows freedom and ethics to coexist.

The problem, though, is that many mistake the Golden Rule for a principle of first strike. They act not out of what they hope for, but out of what they fear. If they think someone might lie, they lie first. If they expect deception, they deceive preemptively. This isn’t wisdom; it’s survivalism disguised as sophistication. It’s not gold—it’s Pyrite, fool’s gold.

To understand how this works, imagine the Prisoner’s Paradox. Two co-conspirators are arrested, separated, and offered a deal: betray the other and your sentence is halved. If both stay silent, both may go free. If one betrays, both are punished—one slightly less so.

The rational thing—the moral thing—would be to trust one another. To cooperate. To live by the Golden Rule. But cooperation requires belief in a just system. What happens if they don’t believe the system is just?

What if they believe that being detained at all means they’re already guilty? What if they think the rules are rigged, the outcome preordained? Then they apply the Pyrite Rule. They betray first, convincing themselves it’s self-preservation. In doing so, they transform a potentially just system into an unjust one—not through law, but through fear and imagination.

And that’s the paradox of modern life: our imagination, which once lifted us from the squalor of nature, now often traps us in a prison of mistrust. We create the very conditions we claim to despise.

Which brings us back to “buyer beware.”We live in a consumer society. We know that not everything for sale is good for us. And yet, we still buy. Buyer beware, yes—but seller be honest.

The truth is that some products and services offer almost no real value—and their sellers know it. Why sell them? Because profit has become our secular salvation. Why buy them? Because we’re all trying to live well within the system that sold us the promise of fulfillment through consumption.

And perhaps, deep down, we don’t want to believe the world is predatory. So we imagine that it’s not. We tell ourselves that everyone acts in good faith—that business is benevolent, that profit follows purpose. But as I discuss in Part 10.19 – Youth Without Youth of my book Beyond Material Salvation, imagination can blind as much as it can redeem.

Recently, the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy (OSB) released a statement titled Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Director’s Order on Credit720 Inc., addressing unethical practices in the Debt Advisory Marketplace. In doing so, they reminded Licensed Insolvency Trustees of their duty under Rule 39 of the Code of Ethics:

“Trustees shall be honest and impartial and shall provide to interested parties full and accurate

information as required by the Act.”

That’s it. The whole of moral economy distilled: buyer beware, seller be honest. A balance between vigilance and virtue, between agency and ethics.

This latest action by the OSB is part of a long effort to confront the growing problems in the debt advisory world—an issue I explore in depth in Chapter 9 of Beyond Material Salvation – Rethinking Insolvency and Debtor Morality.

If this reflection resonates with you, you’ll likely find the book even more so.It’s not just about debt—it’s about how we imagine value, agency, and redemption in a world where everything has a price.

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