But when Southern Luddites try to turn a whole town over to such a regime, you start looking for the scam.
I looked at the pros and cons and it seems nothing but a con.
- Is an extension of anti-globalisation. Who needs more Occupy nutters?
- Places imported goods before locally produced goods. How to kill local industry with carbon miles.
- Enables do-gooders to feel good about themselves. Same as those that have buy a village goat each year, or pay for someone else's third world rugrat monthly to salve their capitalist conscience.
- Is it really fair? It's the real world and someone will being shafted!
- Most of consumer prices charged never make it back to the producer. Supposed Fair Traders are highly unlikely to forward any of their excess profits above expenses back to the producer.
- That Fair Trade T-shirt made with Fair Trade cotton you've paid over the odds for was still made in a sweatshop.
Indeed, just another con to relieve one of money. Like climate change, global warming, carbon trading and Earth Hour.
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12 comments:
PM of NZ. You are anonymously demeaning the efforts of my daughter and implying that she is scamming the business people of Riverton. My name and address is known to you. Here is my email address guy10@actrix.co.nz. Please email me, tell me your name and we can discuss your post. I will show my daughter, aged 17, your post. I'm sure she will want to discuss it with you, as might the dozen or so other students from the high school who have given up many a weekend to come in off their farms to help with the promotion in the town. I'll pass your reply around also, to the business owners in our town who are supporting the initiative from the young people, in particular that of my daughter. They'll probably want to share their thoughts with you as well. I'm keen too, to share your post with the executive of Fairtrade in New Zealand. I'm sure you'll appreciate how interested they will be and likely to respond to your charges. Looking forward to your reply.
37 Suddenly RG becomes a little sensitive forgetting how insensitive he is on his posts around the blogs
That's right, "Anonymous". I'm constantly demeaning the efforts of other blogger's children. Please cut and paste examples to illustrate your well thought-out point.
PM of NZ,you have uncovered the perfect example of a "Cause Person"
One of the self-serving, self-glorifying, would-be do-gooders that infest the landscape.
They are..
"Intrusive beyond endurance.
They wear an air of moral superiority founded on how much they "care;"
They think we need to be "re-educated" or have our "awareness" raised;
Most damning of all, they don't really "do good."
Expressed most eloquently by one Francis W Porretto
Here.
He did seem to miss one arguement though..
"Wont someone think of the children."
MvL, Cheers for that. Hadn't seen it before but the esteemed Mr Porretto, as always, says it all with the right words.
I particularly like
"A man's proper concerns are with his own objectives and obligations. Even should he elect to go beyond that sphere, it must come first. A barrage of demands that he go so far beyond it that he's impeded in attending to it will either cripple him or evoke hostility from him. But the social engineers and do-gooders of that era didn't realize that. They pressed us far beyond what we were willing to bear. " Cause People perfectly fit that description.
Porretto is such an insufferable wee bore. No wonder you ladies like him.
You bill Fair Trade as a hoax and a con, and then offer nothing to back up the allegations short of silly points into which you couldn't have put much effort.
Because I have two mins free....
"Is an extension of anti-globalisation. Who needs more Occupy nutters?"
It's about international trade, and implicitly carries a notion that more (fair) trade is good. Doesn't sound particularly anti-globalization so, swing and a miss there.
"Places imported goods before locally produced goods. How to kill local industry with carbon miles."
Which local products would these be that are negatively affected by Fair Trade Town status? Answer: None.
"Enables do-gooders to feel good about themselves. Same as those that have buy a village goat each year, or pay for someone else's third world rugrat monthly to salve their capitalist conscience."
Even if true, that wouldn't support the argument that Fair Trade is a hoax or a con. Whether people feel better about themselves or not when buying FT has no bearing on its effectiveness, which is borne out by the voluntary participation of the farmers on the other end, ISO accredited certification, ISEAL standards setting, etc.
"Is it really fair? It's the real world and someone will being shafted!"
Who would that be? Not the farmer, as evidenced by the above points. The farmer is clearly the focus of FT, so hardly support for an argument that FT is a con or hoax.
"Most of consumer prices charged never make it back to the producer. Supposed Fair Traders are highly unlikely to forward any of their excess profits above expenses back to the producer."
Fair Trade doesn't work like that, it works like... well, trade. By the time a consumer pays for a product in a shop, the farmer has long since been paid. It's not a charity system that collects at the shop and sends the money back to the grower. It regulates the way companies trade with the farmers (that's where the fairness comes in). Companies selling FT products are competing with each other and companies selling non-FT products... normal market rules apply there.
"That Fair Trade T-shirt made with Fair Trade cotton you've paid over the odds for was still made in a sweatshop."
Nope. All manufacturing points on the garment supply chain need to be verified against that, whether SA8000, FLA, WRC, or another similar system, for the end garment to carry a Fairtrade Cotton mark.
BL+ - in reply - from Wikipedia on the subject.
Criticisms
Ethical basis of criticisms
Consumers have been shown to be content paying higher prices for Fairtrade products, in the belief that this helps the very poor.[34] The main ethical criticism of Fairtrade is that this premium over non-Fairtrade products does not reach the producers and is instead collected by businesses, employees of co-operatives or used for unnecessary expenses. Furthermore, research has cited the implementation of certain Fairtrade standards as a cause for greater inequalities in markets where these rigid rules are inappropriate for the specific market.
Much more here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade
Some may argue the validity of such criticisms - I certainly see them as a basis on which to form my opinion.
RG - I will not be corresponding offline. Feel free to distribute my post to whomever you see fit. Judging by my hit rate yesterday, you may have already have done so.
In summary,
"distributors in developed countries make ‘considerable use of unpaid volunteer workers for routine tasks, many of whom seemed to be under the (false) impression that they were helping out a charity.’"
Thank you, spine-of-jelly anonymous blogger, I will. You'll be infuriated to learn that the Southland Times editorial today focuses on Hollie and her excellent initiative in the town. Initiative in youth, eh! Bah, humbug!
You're going to use Wikipedia, where anyone can write whatever they'd like, as your sole source of information? After-the-fact, no less?
Alright, well the person who wrote the critiques you selected (a) seems to also be under the same misunderstanding that Fair Trade collects donations at the shop, and (b) is out of step with... all of the volunteers I've ever seen promoting FT who seem pretty clear that companies/distributors selling FT products aren't charities.
The organizations that manage the Fairtrade certification system are pretty transparent on how it works. Why not give them a look?
I just commented at your related post about this, PM.
One thing you seem to have missed with your article here is that the people pushing Fairtrade and locally produced goods are exactly the same ones pushing for globalised government and governance.
Guyton I for one applaud your daughter's enthusiasm for her cause and her commitment to it. It's just kinda creepy you and Mrs Guyton have so obviously indoctrinated her into the cult of the Great Green God at such a young age.
Gee Gantt, just because you're busy indoctrinating your children in the ways of the hate-filled bigot doesn't mean everyone else isn't encouraging theirs to think properly.
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