League of Fair Trade Voters | Buying fair trade and advocating fair trade policies

Blood Diamonds

Flaws In The Kimberly Process

The Kimberly Process is a standard intended to make it easier to purchase only ethical diamonds, while avoiding so-called “blood diamonds.” Unfortunately, the basic premise of the Kimberly Process is flawed by design, as only diamond mines controlled by rebel armies are defined as blood diamonds, while diamond mines controlled by government armies- no matter how brutal- are defined as “ethical.”

This was apparently the result of a compromise in the original agreement that produced the Kimberly Process, without which it would not have been able to secure the needed support of governments in the diamond-producing regions. However, the compromise effectively renders the Kimberly Process all but meaningless, as supposedly legitimate governments in that area are not necessarily any less murderous than their rebel counterparts. To give one example, when soldiers from Zimbabwe took over the Marange mine in 2008, they murdered upwards of two hundred diamond miners. Yet diamonds mined at Marange are not officially considered blood diamonds. You could easily purchase a Marange diamond marketed as an “ethical alternative,” but what difference does it make to a diamond miner if he is murdered by a rebel or a soldier?

Ethical consumerism is a noble goal, but the problems with the diamond trade illustrate the difficulty in attempting to combine consumerism and materialism with ethical decision-making in the first place. Diamonds are not even a traditional choice for an engagement ring. The use of diamonds for engagement rings is a recent phenomenon, created by the diamond industry's own marketing campaigns. Rather than futilely attempting to find ethical diamonds, it might just make more sense to forgo them completely.

New Paradigms

The Biggest Challenge

One of the most promising aspects of the Occupy movement has been the way in which it has upset old paradigms. In fact, this is one of the aspects authorities have attacked the most, because once you show that some of the core assumptions of the old paradigm don't really hold true, you weaken the entire structure on which that paradigm is built.

The way we've handled hunger and homelessness are prime examples. The current paradigm assumes scarcity and want, it assumes that we live in a dog eat dog, every man for himself kind of world and then raises the question of whether we ought to throw the less fortunate dogs a bone every now and then or just let them starve.

By showing that it didn't have to be that way, that you didn't have to make those assumptions in the first place, we exposed the lies at the heart of the free market system. We started from the assumption that there was room for everyone, and built little micro-economies based on fulfilling people's needs rather than facilitating mindless and destructive competition. Just by showing that it was even possible to try this, we enraged the powers that be to no end, as witnessed by the criminal charges for serving food and now a lawsuit for running an “unlicensed homeless shelter.”

The trouble with fair trade as a certification system (as opposed to fair trade as a principle) is that it buys into the same assumptions about the validity and inevitability of the capitalist economy. If fair trade as a principle is ever to be realized, the core assumptions of capitalism must be confronted at their base.

It's About A Living Wage

Without That, Of Course People Will Need Food Stamps

According to Minnesota State Representative Mary Franson, her comparison of food stamp recipients to wild animals who will become dependent if you feed them has nothing to do with bashing poor people. No, she just wants to save them from poverty- by cutting them off from food support. In her imagination, this will not have the result of causing half a million Minnesotans to starve, because they'll all magically transform into miniature Donald Trumps and Mitt Romneys, freed from the oppressive hand of government assistance so they can blossom into venture capitalists.

Well, she may be delusional, she may be hateful, but she's right about one thing- this isn't just about her casual bigotry toward the working poor. What it's about is fair trade.

If you usually think of fair trade as a type of unusually expensive coffee or chocolate, this might not make a lot of sense to you. But think of it this way. The minimum amount any job should pay anywhere in the world is enough for that person to live on and support a family on. Paying anything less than that is simply stealing that person's labor. That's true if we're talking about the price of coffee, and it's equally true if we're talking about the wages paid by WalMart and other large corporations in the USA.

For as long as Mary Franson supports “Right To Work” and other union-busting laws, for as long as she fails to support increases in the minimum wage that would make food stamps unnecessary for many of those who currently receive them, she is directly contributing to the need for food stamps. To work as hard as she does to keep wages low, and then insult those who have to be on food stamps as a result- that just shows how out of touch she really is, and how completely unqualified to serve in the legislature. She should resign today.

Trade Vs "Free Trade"

Free Trade Unfair By Design

I'm an anti-capitalist. That's usually seen as being equivalent to saying you're a Marxist, and possibly also an imbecile. But while you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm not an imbecile, I think I can prove that I'm no Marxist either.

Marxism is an explicitly materialist philosophy, rejecting any spirituality of any kind. That puts it on a par with capitalism as an anti-human force, because the answer to capitalism's soullessness is not to create some rival form of soullessness. Human beings are spiritual beings, not commodities or units of production or tools or numbers. Capitalism and Marxism treat people as numbers, numbers whose suffering and death mean very little.

The answer to what's wrong with capitalism is to create a new world where people are considered the highest value and profits are not. A world where people can live meaningful, fulfilling lives in real communities filled with art and beauty and play and work. Not a world defined by a soul-crushing struggle for mere survival or an empty competition for useless junk.

Trade has always existed and always will. According to archeologists, it existed in the Stone Age. But so-called “free trade” or “free market capitalism” is a different matter, a scheme designed to funnel money and power from the many to the few by ensuring that all negotiations occur in a context of drastic inequality between the two parties. True fair trade would require both partners to the trade to be on equal footing. If such a thing existed, we'd have a shot at building the kind of world where all people could live as real human beings.

Foxconn Conditions

Lack of Options For Workers Doesn't Make It Okay

In the unbelievably cynical article linked below, it is argued that the conditions at Foxconn are perfectly acceptable- despite the fact that multiple workers there have killed themselves rather than continue to endure them- because the people of China are so desperate that they are lining up to work there despite knowing about the suicides.

If the alternative is a grueling life as a peasant farmer or a desperate life as a sex worker, claims the author of this article, then working at Foxconn is an improvement and thus all the criticism is misguided.

It may very well be true that people with very little power and very few economic options may see this as an opportunity. That is only to say that they are in a position where it is easy for Foxconn to exploit them, so it does so with impunity. To argue that their lack of options justifies Foxconn's predatory practices is the height of cynicism, and a perfect illustration of the sinister reality behind “free market” economic philosophies. Until we stop worshiping the false god of free enterprise and start putting people first, the few will always exploit the many, and their apologists will always try to convince us that it is somehow justified. Those workers mean less than nothing to the people who profit from their suffering, except insofar as their bottom line is affected. If we buy into this fundamentally anti-human philosophy, arguments like the one in that article will sound reasonable. If we think about the situation from the perspective of human values, we will see them for what they are- self-serving exercises in deception.

Apple Begins Inspections

We Need To Keep Up The Pressure

Thanks to a worldwide outpouring of protest and pressure, Apple has announced that it will begin an inspection program of its Foxconn supplier, ensuring satisfactory labor conditions for its Chinese workers. While this is a partial victory, we can't stop here. Apple isn't doing these inspections because it cares about the people who make its products. If it cared about their well-being, it would have acted a long time ago, instead of waiting until a wave of protest began to undermine its brand. Apple has ordered these inspections for one reason only- to defuse the protests before they start to lose Apple any money.

We have to keep up the pressure or even increase it, or we can expect these inspections to become a whitewash. Apple will only implement systemic reforms in the way its workers are treated if it believes it has no other choice. It would much prefer to make a few empty statements and symbolic gestures, and then go back to business as usual when everyone forgets about it.

The whole reason companies outsource is so they can avoid paying decent wages, abuse their workers with impunity and dodge their tax obligations here at home. When Obama asked Steve Jobs what it would take to get Apple products made in the US, Jobs made it clear that there was nothing he could do. You simply can't ask American workers to live in their factories like industrial slaves, work sixty hour weeks, and get treated so badly they would rather be dead than alive. You can do that in China, and that's exactly why Apple has its products made there. They won't change unless we make them.

Fair Trade or Trade Justice?

Let's Look At The Big Picture

The problem with fair trade as a concept is that it's market-based, so it accepts the underlying premise of a free-enterprise economy based on endless profit and endless growth. But the free-enterprise concept is itself a scam. Buying and selling things is not the problem- people have been doing that since the Stone Age, and they'll always do it. What goes under the name of free enterprise is something different, a global system designed and created to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

A capitalist economy is based on endless growth, so companies in such an economy inevitably produce an excess- more products than they can really sell. To sell those products, they need new markets, even if those markets were previously functional (if rarely wealthy) local economies. So the elites of one country sit down with the elites of the other and hammer out a new “free trade agreement,” and before you know it the bigger country gets to flood the smaller one with its excess products. Meanwhile, since the companies from the bigger country can now build factories in the smaller country, they can also employ all the people they put out of business and pay them just barely enough to survive in dire poverty.

Back at home in the bigger country, they can close any factories with unionized workers, and those people who are newly out of work will eventually be forced to accept low-wage service industry jobs with no benefits in place of the good jobs they used to have. They'll still be able to afford distracting and entertaining consumer products, though, because distraction and entertainment is a vital part of the whole scam. People have to be kept apathetic or they might fight back.

How is fair trade going to fix all this? How is it going to make any impact at all? If we try to rely on “market solutions,” the market will keep doing what it always does- draining the weak to fatten the strong.

Apple's China Problem

No Excuses, No Defenses

Even slavery had its defenders- in fact, it still does. If you read any story about chocolate slavery, there will be comments in support of it. Defenders of Apple's use of sweatshop labor in China are in the same position, defending the indefensible in the name of profits and efficiency.

If you believe in any human values at all, you will not believe that sixteen hour shifts and a seven day work week are excusable on any grounds whatsoever. If a company cannot make a profit or stay in business without those types of labor practices, then it has no right to either earn a profit or stay in business. Making a fetish out of profits and efficiency is a modern kind of idolatry, and those who worship those particular golden calves will defend their false idols with every rhetorical trick in the book. That doesn't change the reality of what they are doing. They are the moral equivalent of apologists for slavery, and their position is as inexcusable as they practices they defend.

The workers at Foxconn (the company that makes Apple products in China) have threatened to commit mass suicide if their conditions are not improved. Just stop and think about that before you give me another smug explanation of how I don't understand the realities of capitalism.

Apple products are superior products. That doesn't excuse them even one iota from their moral responsibilities. If you love the products that Apple makes, as so many people do, then you should join the campaign to pressure them into improving the conditions of their Chinese labor force.

Two Kinds of Fair Trade

Clear Labels Are Needed

Fair Trade USA has just made a change to its rules for Fair Trade certification. Companies can now receive one of two types of Fair Trade label on their products. The product can either be labeled “Fair Trade Certified” or “Fair Trade Ingredients.” The first one means that the entire product is fair trade, and the second one means that just some of the ingredients are.

I'm not sure if this tightens up their previous rules or loosens them, but either way it will require informed consumers to make intelligent use of this information. If a consumer with only passing familiarity with the fair trade concept sees a label on a product describing it as “Fair Trade Ingredients,” he or she could easily assume the product is more fair trade than it really is, which would have the effect of “greenwashing” the product.

Either there ought to be a single label and a single standard- one hundred percent fair trade, with strict requirements for earning the label- or the “Fair Trade Ingredients” label ought to be phrased in such a way that greenwashing does not occur, ensuring that anyone can tell merely by glancing at the label that the product is not one hundred percent fair trade. The fair trade concept should not be allowed to become a brand or (worse still) a marketing gimmick. If that ends up happening, “Fair Trade” labels will be used to facilitate the continuation of practices that are anything but fair.

The Fair Trade Tea Party?

A Strange Combination

The Tea Party is not exactly my favorite bunch of people, and for a lot of reasons. Tea Party Nation, for instance, just issued a demand for small business owners to deliberately stop hiring in order to sabotage the economy and defeat Obama. That's a deliberate stab in the back against their own country and everyone who lives in it, by people who ostentatiously present themselves as super-patriots.

But there are different factions within the Tea Party, and some of them have more of an overlap with Occupy than most people would assume. One of these is the Fair Trade Tea Party, which staged a raucous demonstration in DC back in 2010, in which they actually skirmished with law enforcement in an attempt to demand Fair Trade policies instead of corporate “free trade.”

The mere existence of such a group comes as quite a surprise to me, and I have to wonder where they are today. Are the members of the Fair Trade Tea Party still participating in the Tea Party movement, or did they all jump ship and become Occupiers as soon as they had the chance? I searched for a group with that name on the internet, but they no longer seem to have a web presence, if they ever did.

A lot of Tea Party people seem like malevolent racists and spiteful classists to me. But the fact that a group like the Fair Trade Tea Party even existed at all shows that there are or were other aspects to the Tea Party movement, with some of which I might have quite a bit of common ground.

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