Hard News: The Near Future
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Sue, I'm puzzelled how you can acknowledge that Fair Trade doesn't pay as much as Illy and not see it as a sham.
Volunteer for who ever you like. Our world is a better place for it. But the after mass cuppa at my parish doesn't claim to be a business model for cafes.
Fair Trade as used by these charities will keep the producers in poverty (as opposed to absolute poverty) & is not fair trade.
Trade Aid, Oxfam et al need to be accountable or they'll all be WorldVision & CORSO money making ventures who have lost sight of their purpose.(World Vision does have unstated purposes of course).
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See it's very easy to point fingers when someone or a company is doing a little bit of good, becuase oh gosh it's not doing everything everything perfect so it must be evil.
Um, it might help if everyone stopped throwing around the E-word. But having said that, Sue, it's fair enough to say 'don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.' But it's also equally fair to hold Trade Aid to the same standards as any other corporate - is this real change or marketing 'greenwash', does the rhetoric line up with reality?
And as a consumer,I do try to be well-informed (and healthily sceptical) about the reality behind the marketing. Surely that applies to appeals to my 'social consciousness', every bit as much as advertising campaigns trying to manipulate my sexual vanity. :)
It doesn't matter how many kilos of coffee you buy from Trade Aid if you're going to keep voting for politicians who preach open markets abroad and protectionism at home. I'm probably more of a 'globalisation' fan that you're average PA reader, but that doesn't mean I don't recognise there's a global market in political hypocrisy (from both the left and the right) where trade is concerned.
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To a greater or lesser extent, the goal is surely achieving improvements in the fairness and sustainability of trade. I don't think globalisation necessarily means trade can not be fair or sustainable, but I appreciate that it hasn't been.
The merits of Trade Aid et al are surely that they're attempting to encourage the development of competitive industry to replace the need for aid. So too, apparently, is structural adjustment - although Stiglitz's critique of IMF's efforts to date is pretty revealing.
don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good
I like this, it's a lovely turn of phrase. And I agree with Craig's injuncture that we hold our politicians to a reasonable standard. But I interpret this to be an argument for politicians to not only be more active and honest but also to extend their range of actions into areas of economic activity and market operations that'll seriously upset the orthodoxy but I can't see an alternative?
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Labour, under Moore, nearly won the 1993 election, and one of the reasons they didn't was Clark's backers downed tools in the last week of the campaign and did sod all. They didn't want to win under Moore.
Whoa Nelly! That really is dark.
And Clarke may well experience similar treatment from the Greens next election, if they decide not to prop up yet another Labour govt this time. -
Rob
So did Helen do this purely for self promotion or was it a step back from the right? -
Sue,
fair trade is better than not fair trade
so to me that's something
and why spend all your energy banging fair trade, when they do better than most. they don't profess to be perfect but it's better than not fair tradeOr becuase it's fair trade & does some good it has to be held to a higher more accountable standard than people who don't practice fair trade?
Geesh nobody will ever make an effort to change the world if small steps resulting in harsher criticism than if you do nothing.
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The merits of Trade Aid et al are surely that they're attempting to encourage the development of competitive industry to replace the need for aid . . .
. . . and to demonstrate a willingness, on the part of the volunteers, to work towards an equitable form of globalisation. As long as we lack immediately demonstrable models of 'fair and sustainable' business practices, such efforts would seem to deserve constructive support, rather than bad-tempered condemnation.
Even if a visit to Parihaka '06 has imbued you with little more than a sense of moral superiority and an urge to preach, like the guy who returned from Lourdes with two new tyres on his wheelchair you can only do the best with what you got.
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Sue,
nicely said joe
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But it's also equally fair to hold Trade Aid to the same standards as any other corporate - is this real change or marketing 'greenwash', does the rhetoric line up with reality?
Indeed, it is important to guard against the old greenwash.
I was curious about the economics of it all.
The rules have been made up in the West to suit Western feelings of guilt over some pretty shonky ROI models to producers.
What is a ROI model? (Return on investment?)
Any more detail from Don Christie would be nice, I think I understand what you are saying about trade barriers but please tell us more about:As a result of the rules lots of deserving producers miss on the value of an FT label whilst others are in a position of overproducing due to the high prices they receive in an artificially cornered market.
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Joe & Sue
Have you spoken to any producers to check their reactions to fair trade?Sue
Your own example shows fair trade is a maketing ploy that does a lot of good for the conscience of the idle rich & limited good for the desperately poor.I'm sure there is more on fair trade and coffee but that's my 2 cents.
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WH,
I went to see Mike Moore and Dr Peter Watson speak at Auckland University earlier this year about their work to promote free trade. Moore spoke passionately, and obviously believes that freer trade structures have a lot of promise.
The unintuitive concepts and jargon of economics alienates a lot of people, but the work of people like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman help the centre and centre left develop a better understanding of how economic policy can be used to help people more effectively.
I've been meaning to get around to reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_Its_DiscontentsBehind the free market ideology there is a model, often attributed to Adam Smith, which argues that market forces--the profit motive--drive the economy to efficient outcomes as if by an invisible hand. One of the great achievements of modern economics is to show the sense in which, and the conditions under which, Smith's conclusion is correct. It turns out that these conditions are highly restrictive. Indeed, more recent advances in economic theory --ironically occurring precisely during the period of the most relentless pursuit of the Washington Consensus policies--have shown that whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries, then the invisible hand works most imperfectly. Significantly, there are desirable government interventions which, in principle, can improve upon the efficiency of the market. These restrictions on the conditions under which markets result in efficiency are important--many of the key activities of government can be understood as responses to the resulting market failures.
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Ormerod's criticism of the theory of competitive equilibrium is particularly lyrical. In The Death of Economics he states:
The theoretical model of competitive equilibrium is a formidable intellectual construct. A similar situation arose, for example, in the Middle Ages, when the belief that the sun revolved around the Earth led to astronomical models of great complexity as scholars struggled to account for ever more discrepancies between the observed paths of the heavenly bodies and those required by the theory. Eventually, the entire model was laid to rest.
In addition to his criticism of orthodox economic theory, Ormerod is working on alternative models, including models based on complex and dependent systems such as biological ecosystems, and which do not rely on simple individualistic benefit maximisation or the fiction of perfect information.
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Joe & Sue
Have you spoken to any producers to check their reactions to fair trade?Not lately - but should I feel the urge to dump on some misguided do-gooding idle-rich straw-person I guess I ought to clear it with a producer first.
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Is this any of your do-gooding Joe?
Tarnished Philanthropy: China Questions Recent Medical Supply Shipments from U.S.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/3863
Appetite Stimulants for the Starving
http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/starving.html -
Sue,
None of us on PA have worries about our next meal or where we get to sleep tonight. So that makes us all rich to one degree.
I must be idle becuase my knowledge of the coffee trade (at least) comes from seeing a rather brilliant film at the film festival, and doing a lot of reading and so forth afterward - yup spare time i must be idle.
I'd hang around for a bit of a free and open discussion but personal attacks on any level are uncool so I'm done
and leave you with this
http://www.blackgoldmovie.com -
Thanks for that link Sue, will have to wait till I get home to view it however.
As far as the bloody bourgeoisie goes, I found a fun wordy article about the coffeehouse on Arts and Letters Daily.
Now I will try to link, although I will not do it right. Again.
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Kowhai, the reason your links don't format properly is that you use a "/" where you should use a "|".
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Ah, lightbulb. Thank you so much.
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Appetite Stimulants for the Starving
Nasty, but nothing new. When the artificial sweetener sodium cyclamate was banned in the US in the early 70s, after being conclusively proven to cause birth defects, multinationals received tax credits for offloading their stockpiles of tainted soft drinks as foreign aid to Vietnam.
There's a huge gap between this kind of deliberate vileness and someone who does voluntary work for Trade Aid who may not be fully aware of the organisation's real impact.
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Joe that's my point. That "I'm a good person doing good" doesn't mean good is being done. Even the idel-rich (volunteers) need to open their eyes and ask a few questions.
Off Topic (as I think we can all agree we've done it or ourselves to death).
This link might shed a little light on why I'm banging a lone drum on PI Labour. I see it as "Black Birdiing" (Slavery) & the reason Aust isn't coming in on it with us, they're taking a moral stand!
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Michael, on a quick read this appears to argue that the benefits of improved labour mobility primarily accrue to the more developed nations with only secondary benefits to the poorer economies (primarily in the form of wages remitted "home"). Therefore, loosening restrictions on labour mobility is not a substitute for improving domestic productivity but we're still stuck with how to do this - this article seems to suggest improving access to land however in the absence of restrictions around FDI or patient capital you have to wonder whether development will simply export any profits?
Incidentally, work-related risks to migrant workers are generally significantly higher than domestic workers not only because of language issues but also because of the industries into which migrant labour flows - an article in last week's SMH tells the tragic story of Mongolian/Chinese forestry workers in far north Queensland.
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Paul
True enough, for the Islands to become economically strong will require domestic production. Fair Trade if you will.I was concerning myself with the various legal status of the workers and their freedom to move to better their condition, as I can if I so wish without a loss of human rights & dignity.
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Hi kowhai
I quite like this article, Fairness in International Trade, which makes a good stab at identifying "fairness" without necessarily supporting my comment about FT coffee. Recognition that the analysis has to be much deeper than a simplistic western accreditation regime is a pretty good start and really all I ask.
This article linked to on the above page emphasises that globalisation is both an opportunity and a threat.
This study has the following words in its conclusion:
Section four has however made clear fair trade is not a tool suited to tackle issues of the size of the coffee crisis. Additionally, OLS regressions of section four have put in evidence consumer awareness is not making a difference and treatment regressions support the hypothesis fair trade is used by supermarkets to clean-wash their reputation.
Here is a link to some research sponsored by the Fairtrade partnership which counter the criticisms have been made.
Suffice to say, when I think of "fair trade" I am not thinking labeling regimes, I am thinking of international structures and rules that are not totally skewed to the advantage of western nations.
Which brings us back to the analysis of Mike Moore's tenure at the WTO. Some cute, self serving comments about his cunning and guile but not much about whether he achieved anything towards creating fairness in that organisation.
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Ta very much, now I can wile away some time. I may need to pop out for a coffee first ; )
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Ta very much, now I can wile away some time. I may need to pop out for a coffee first ; )
Several in fact. Thanks indeed Don and others, this is discussion has been typically interesting and this material looks like good reading. The PA community is in good health.
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