Most Fairtrade coffee is roasted and packaged in Europe, principally in Belgium and Germany. That is unnecessary and retards development. Farmers working for Costa Rica's Café Britt have climbed the economic ladder not just by growing beans but by doing the processing, roasting and packaging and branding themselves. But Café Britt is not welcome on the Fairtrade scheme. Most Café Britt farmers are self-employed small business people who own the land they farm. That is unacceptable to the ideologues at FLO International, Fairtrade's international certifiers, who will accredit farmers only if they give up their small-business status and join together into a co-operative.
There is evidence that Fairtrade is damaging quality, too. Its farmers typically sell in both Fairtrade and open markets. Because the price in the open market is solely determined by quality, they sell their better beans in that market and then dump their poorer beans into the Fairtrade market, where they are guaranteed a good price. That's worth considering next time you pop out for an espresso.
yeah except theres trade laws..j.pickens said:Supposed "Fair Trade" has had exactly the opposite effect for coffee growers in South America and Africa.
I see nothing to suggest that these governmental know-nothings will do any better in other industries.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/3326587/Halo-of-Fairtrade-casts-a-shadow-on-poverty.html
juicy quote:
Most Fairtrade coffee is roasted and packaged in Europe, principally in Belgium and Germany. That is unnecessary and retards development. Farmers working for Costa Rica's Café Britt have climbed the economic ladder not just by growing beans but by doing the processing, roasting and packaging and branding themselves. But Café Britt is not welcome on the Fairtrade scheme. Most Café Britt farmers are self-employed small business people who own the land they farm. That is unacceptable to the ideologues at FLO International, Fairtrade's international certifiers, who will accredit farmers only if they give up their small-business status and join together into a co-operative.
There is evidence that Fairtrade is damaging quality, too. Its farmers typically sell in both Fairtrade and open markets. Because the price in the open market is solely determined by quality, they sell their better beans in that market and then dump their poorer beans into the Fairtrade market, where they are guaranteed a good price. That's worth considering next time you pop out for an espresso.
Chip said:If there were any real legal stricture against products made by underpaid, mistreated peasants in underdeveloped countries, we'd all be naked and starving for lack of things to wear and eat. Most of the things you own were made by someone who makes less in a year than you do in a week. No point in getting all soppy about it now.
Laurencevde said:The solution is time. China will sort itself out eventually, but you can't force it. If china would be more humane, they would be less competitive, and less money would flow to china, so less people would have a job. The situation in china is improving as more and more people get a job(any job is better than no job...), and the domestic market is growing. China still has a large amount of unemployed people, and they will take any job they can get. Once china runs out of unemployed, their workforce will start looking at better jobs, and salaries and working conditions will rise. It just takes time, and forcing it will just slow down the process.
No one in this thread has said "it's their own fault" or anything even close to that. In fact, it has been almost entirely "yes, things are bad and need to get better". I fail to see what's so unbelievable about that.intense_mc said:Some of these comments are unbelieveable...but then I remember someone telling me, on the issue of those starving to death in the Africas, "it's their own fault. They don't do anything about it."
Laurencevde said:The solution is time. China will sort itself out eventually, but you can't force it. If china would be more humane, they would be less competitive, and less money would flow to china, so less people would have a job. The situation in china is improving as more and more people get a job(any job is better than no job...), and the domestic market is growing. China still has a large amount of unemployed people, and they will take any job they can get. Once china runs out of unemployed, their workforce will start looking at better jobs, and salaries and working conditions will rise. It just takes time, and forcing it will just slow down the process.
I did read your post very carefully, thrice. As I said, your anecdote, while understood and appreciated, had no bearing on the rest of the discussion. You suggested that some of the previous posts were "willfully ignorant" and definitely said that someone would say "no, it's not like that" which suggests you missed the point of the discussion entirely. That is why I tried to correct you; there's no debate about whether it's like that or not, it's been established that it is. The debate is whether forcing change through boycott will work, or if the risk of collapse is too great and a course of slower internal change is better.intense_mc said:And wizardstan, please read my post again - CAREFULLY. I never said anyone said that, I gave an analogy and even said why I gave that analogy.
So every bestselling book is undisputed in accuracy?Even after pointing him to, say, the best-selling "Confessions of An Economic Hitman"
Haha, nice one!Xanas said:So every bestselling book is undisputed in accuracy?Even after pointing him to, say, the best-selling "Confessions of An Economic Hitman"
Chip said:If there were any real legal stricture against products made by underpaid, mistreated peasants in underdeveloped countries, we'd all be naked and starving for lack of things to wear and eat. Most of the things you own were made by someone who makes less in a year than you do in a week. No point in getting all soppy about it now.