IF, IN our time, money is the measure of all things, what are we to make of the apparently discordant information that some people are willing to pay more for organic food when they could easily pay less, and in many cases much less, for conventional food? Is it possible that some of us think organic – or free-range, or grass-fed – food is actually worth the extra money, and is that because it tastes better or is better for us or better for the earth? Or all of the above?

I pose these overobvious questions in service of illustrating a wider principle: that consumers are not, perhaps, as monomaniacally focused on "low prices, always" as the national media circus might suggest. Over the past generation, increasing numbers of people have come to accept that the organic premium is worth paying, and – a necessary corollary – that the best food (like the best government) is local. Hence the profusion of farmers markets, not just in northern California but all over the country.

Of course it is not exactly a revelation that patterns and habits of consumption are plastic and can be changed. If they weren't and they couldn't, there would be no point in advertising. What is revelatory, or at least hopeful, is the indication that consumers are capable of seeing transactions in more than one dimension. If people are willing to spend more for healthier food sustainably grown, they might also be willing to spend more for a wider array of items – from boxer shorts to kitchen strainers – made in accordance with the environmental and labor standards of our own country. To do otherwise, righteously to huff and puff about environmental and working conditions and then buy cheap stuff we let our multinationals make with quasi-slave labor in poor and vulnerable countries, is rank hypocrisy.

Joel Bakan notes, in his new book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, $25), that corporations, far from being immune to governmental discipline, are in fact creatures of government and cannot exist without the web of laws government spins. For all the talk in recent years about McDonald's assuming a seat on the U.N. Security Council, the truth is that government, and in particular our government, still holds the power to bring mischievous corporations to heel.

But no one holds more power than we the people, for we can choose simply not to buy what is offered to us, whether it is a genetically modified tomato or a pair of Skechers made by some preadolescent Chinese girl who's only allowed to visit the rest room once every 12 hours. We can – we should, we must – demand better.