There is good news for the differently-conscienced and the caringly-caffeinated. They no longer have to exorcise their middle-class guilt by travelling overland to India or teaching English to ragamuffins in the shanty towns of Kinshasa.
Absolution is soon to be found right here in Central London:
The UK’s first fair trade coffee shops are set to open later this year, courtesy of Oxfam. And to give customers a flavour of what to expect, it opened one for a day in central London.
As if anybody does not know what to expect!
The food is fair trade wherever possible, so fruit, cereal bars and chocolate are “ethical” but pastries are not.
These diabolical right-wing, warmongering neo-pastries with their blundering, inept foreign policies are inflaming the ‘Arab street’ and bringing the world to the brink of war. It’s all about creeeeeeeeaaaamm!
“The cafes are about people enjoying classy coffee in a classy place. If they want to find out about the coffee and the issues they can make that discovery. It’s not about saying ‘Come and feel worthy’ but ‘come and have a super time’. The values are extra.”
Only if munching your way through an inedible cereal bar in the company of a bunch of po-faced do-gooders is your idea of a super time.
There are photographs on the walls showing the people who matter most in the venture – the farmers from Honduras, Ethiopia and Indonesia.
Collectively, they share 25% of the profits, community projects in those areas get another 25% and Oxfam has a 50% share.
In other words, some 75% ends up back in the pockets of the professional welfare classes. This is not ‘fair trade’, its a money-laundering scheme.
Two cups of hot, steaming piety, please!
Why not pastries? What’s with the cream?
David Carr writes:
“In other words, some 75% ends up back in the pockets of the professional welfare classes. This is not ‘fair trade’, its a money-laundering scheme.”
Mmm… provides a whole new definition of ‘bean counters’, doesn’t it?
Charities cost money to run. There’s no reason to suppose that 75% is being creamed off for “the professional welfare classes”. It’s more likely being spent on admin, transport, advertising, rent, etc. If you think you could do better for less, feel free to start your own charity in competition.
Personally I have no problem with “fair trade”. It’s just another consumer choice, a brand which charges more and gives charity. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
Julian Morrison writes:
“Charities cost money to run. There’s no reason to suppose that 75% is being creamed off for “the professional welfare classes”. ”
Having actually worked for a charity (albeit in a freelance capacity) at one point, I can assure you that you are entirely wrong.
Never have I seen such waste, extravagance, self-aggrandising empire-building and rapacious freeloading as I witnessed there.
I gather from others who have chosen to labour in similar vineyards of piety, that it was pretty typical.
There’s no reason to suppose that 75% is being creamed off for “the professional welfare classes”.
No reason other than the crappy track record of charities.
Insulated as they are from the discipline of the market, non-profit organizations are hideously inefficient, generally backward, and frequently repositories for those unable to cope with competition. There are, of course, shining exceptions, but the rank and file of non-profits is just about what you would expect once you realize that they traffic in emotional manipulation in a environment that is completely devoid of accountability.
I’m just a college student that’s taken a couple of intro to econ courses, but it seems like the third poster is taking ‘profits’ to mean ‘revenue’–profits don’t include fixed costs like administration, transportation, etc.
Seriously, what is wrong with “pastries”? AFAIK, they’re made of wheat flour, some sort of fat or vegetable oil, & sugar. Normally speaking, these are rather local, typically intra-EU, produce – who’s being “exploited” in their manufacture? Or can things other than “exploitation” make food products “unethical”?
I would guess, Unknown, that the pastries are not eligible for privileged treatment mostly because they are a traditional food of white folks. Probably made by white folks, too. Only brown people’s traditions and products are worthy of recognition by our betters, doncha know.
Yall aren’t thinking like free-marketers. If something sucks, that’s a market opportunity to profit from doing better.
Regarding Julian’s comment: most of the Fair Trade organizations explicitly or implicitly complain that the prices paid to farmers in poor countries are too low in comparison to the prices paid by consumers in rich countries, and that “middlemen” skim a significant portion of the spread, with the rest going to the importing roasters/distributors. This would imply the existence of non-economic profits within the coffee (or cocoa) market that should then be ripe for competitive entry by entrepreneurs who would be willing to pay higher prices to poor farmers in order to guarantee a larger market of raw coffee to market to rich country roasters. It may be that OxFam and other charities are doing this, but at rate of 50% (or rather, 75%) of the revenue? Why not at least split the revenues 50/50 and let the farmers decide how to spend their money locally?
If something sucks, that’s a market opportunity to profit from doing better.
It depends on what that “something” is. If my local mobsters, for example, run a really lousy, inefficient protection racket, I don’t consider that my chance to field a superior class of goon.
Charity is vital in a libertarian society, but this isn’t one. Most of the charities I’ve had dealings with were glorified extortion schemes (I’m thinking particularly of the United Way, one of my favorite hate objects), where the guys at the top live high off the hog on the miseries of others. Vultures are less unclean.
Once again I agree with Julian, and find the original post to be partisan ranting. No one is forced to shop there, anyone who does so presumably supports the venture.
If people try to do good, but badly, and on the basis of ignorance, then one should criticise the ignorance and poor execution, not the original motive to do good.
G Cooper writes – “Having actually worked for a charity (albeit in a freelance capacity) at one point, I can assure you that you are entirely wrong. Never have I seen such waste, extravagance, self-aggrandising empire-building and rapacious freeloading as I witnessed there.”
The same goes for most corporations. Incompetence, waste, and office politics are are not a political issue, rather they characterise human organisations of all kinds. This is yet another piece of biased partisan waffle.
Psychologists have long commented upon the tendency of human beings to identify with their social groups to the extent that after being a member for long enough, they eventually distort their interpretation of all news and events so that it supports their group, and portrays rival groups in a negative light. The libertarian right is by no means immune from this basic human tendency, as these posts by Mr Carr and Mr Cooper seem to display.
One should bear in mind the importance of making political theories and critiques on the basis of objective fact, and avoid as much as possible the tendency to demonise one’s enemies. The latter route simply creates the same kind of partisan nonsense one sees in elected assemblies all over the world. The former approach is far more likely to lead to genuine knowledge and progress.
The same goes for most corporations.
Oh no it doesn’t. Good old-fashioned capitalist corporations are ultimately beholden to shareholders, tend to sell products on their merits, not on how meritorious you will be for buying them, and don’t portray themselves as saints for being in business at all.
Finding out that people are getting stinking, filthy rich off the concept of helping the poor (without, somehow, managing to help the poor) is like finding out the preacher is diddling the boys’ choir, or the UN is a bunch of totalitarian scumbags, or Rush Limbaugh is a pillhead, or the Oversight Committee for Ethics in Government is taking bribes to look the other way — it’s not what they do that’s so galling, it’s the disconnect between what they do and what they say they do.
Of all the world’s many hypocrisies, the pious kind are the most galling.
S Weasel – Yes, the United Way is a thuggish racket. What they do is set up a competitive sense among CEOs in a city, and this filters down through the “Human Resources” departments in the banks and corporations to the rank and file. They get the CEOs pumped up to wanting their organisation to be publicly recogised for having given the most. He wants to attend the dinner and be publicly thanked and get warm applause. If you don’t “give generously”, you are letting your CEO down and we know who you are.
One year, I didn’t return my computer card – just tore it up and threw it away. I was called up to Human Resources and asked for my card. I told them I threw it away because I didn’t intend to pledge a penny. They gave me another computer card and told me to put an X in the box that said one would not be donating anything and sign the card. So it was on the record that it wasn’t carelessness or forgetfulness; I had deliberately refused to be a team player.
Julian Morrison: “Personally I have no problem with “fair trade”. I don’t either, which is why I despise organisations like this one.
There is one inconceivably easy way to ensure fair trade without building a charitable edifice around it and that is to remove the damned CAP and give producers from Africa and anywhere else that would like to have a go, a chance to market their produce in fortress EU.
That would be fair trade and it is not going to happen in protectionist Europe because they are scared. They’re scared of competition and they’re scared of the embedded beneficiaries of the CAP scam.
Cobden Bright writes:
” Incompetence, waste, and office politics are are not a political issue, rather they characterise human organisations of all kinds. This is yet another piece of biased partisan waffle.”
No. It was reportage. Real. It happened. The “biased partisan waffle” was your arrogant dismissal of someone else’s first hand experience of a charity, simply because it conflicted with your Leftist beliefs.
Well they could serve hash brownies, couldn’t they? Or poppy seed cake? Don’t these third world crops count?
“There is one inconceivably easy way to ensure fair trade without building a charitable edifice around it and that is to remove the damned CAP and give producers from Africa and anywhere else that would like to have a go, a chance to market their produce in fortress EU.
That would be fair trade and it is not going to happen in protectionist Europe because they are scared. They’re scared of competition and they’re scared of the embedded beneficiaries of the CAP scam.”
You’re right of course… & not just Europeans; American farmers benefit (& are doubtless scared of the competition) too.
But in absence of much action by our governments, this is at least acting as a stopgap measure, for those who choose to buy the product anyway, no? Perhaps helping, for a few poor farmers, to make up for being f**ed over by European politicians.
The same individuals who are setting up this shop/fair trade initiatives are probably lobbying the government to change the rules, but it’s a slower process. Just because that would better, doesn’t make anything done in the meanwhile wrong or stupid.
& yes, buying fairtrade products is a consumer choice; just like deliberately paying slightly over the odds to shop in your local shop rather than the supermarket. If you don’t like the idea, don’t do it.
Well at least they are open about it, unlike Christian “we help marxist rebels” Aid.
The real problem I have with ‘fair trade’ coffee is that is tastes like crap. Even if this movement were not an economically-illiterate bit of touchy-feely do-gooding (and here I give it the benefit of the doubt), I would refuse to pour that swill down my throat.
The problem with coffee prices is obvious to anybody but an Oxfam bedwetter. There is massive oversupply in the coffee market, coupled with huge agrarian subsidies distorting the price signals that oversupply gives. A 50% reduction in the acreage given over to coffee production is a necessary but not sufficient step towards rectifying the situation. ‘Fair trade’ coffee actually exacerbates this problem. The best solution is a rigorous application of free-market principles. Paying above the market-clearing rate disincentivises growers from moving to more efficient economic activities.
I mainly drink Britt Tarrazú Montecielo coffee. This is 100% Strictly Hard Bean Arabica, shade-grown at 1500 m above sea level in the Tarrazú mountain region of Costa Rica. It’s among the best coffees that money can buy (until you’ve drunk coffee of this sort of quality, you haven’t really drunk coffee at all). I pay ¢1940 for a 340g bag (about £2.50). It runs about $7.50 a bag in the States. Because of its superior qualities, the growers are paid a premium by the roasters, who have negotiated exclusive access to the crop. This is small-scale, even boutique production, but the growers are making money. They’re not competing with the millions of hectares of Robusta rubbish that the Vietnamese and Brazilians have planted. They have differentiated on quality. Increasingly Costa Rican growers are seeking to market themselves as providing a premium product. This is the way forward for coffee producers elsewhere: play to the demand in the West for superior products or get out of the market.
David Gillies, not all Robusta is rubbish, it depends on the region in which it is grown. My favorite is Yemen, it has an almost chocolate flavor to it and a good balance.
Sorry, David Gillies, I laid an egg on that one. Yemen is definitely Arabica. I would have sworn up and down it was Robusta.
Memory is the second thing to go …
David: Thank you for another wickedly funny article.
Cobden Bright: You completely miss the point.
If people try to do good, but badly, and on the basis of ignorance, then one should criticise the ignorance and poor execution, not the original motive to do good.
The issue isn’t the execution. These people are not trying to do any good. Their project aims to further entrench a culture of guilt and altruism, and for that it is entirely proper that it should be attacked.
The comments by various posters along the lines of “if you don’t like it don’t shop there” are also redundant. Obviously no one here would prescribe any differently.
Surely it is clear that it is just as necessary to attack the culture that underlies the politics as much as the politics itself?
Enough about despicable charities and coffee . . . I believe David has identified a first-rate marketing idea: “Fair Trade Pastries.” It’s terrific brand concept, advantageously positioned to capture a large market share at universities, media companies and anti-war demonstrations. What that term might actually mean is irrelevant, of course…