An attempt to clarify the facts about Fair Trade certification and refute misinformation about it spread by certain libertarians. by Dan Clore
(libertarian)
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Misinformation about Fair Trade
by Dan Clore
A recent editorial by Barry Liebling, "Whole Foods Has Guts", manages to encapsulate an enormous amount of misinformation about Fair Trade in one short comment. He says:
"For a long time Whole Foods has kowtowed to radical collectivist causes. The company boasts that it sells items certified by Trans Fair USA and Rainforest Alliance as being 'Fair Trade' -- that is, foods that 'politically aware' consumers are willing to pay more for because they are made by Third World workers controlled by leftist organizations."
It's hard to know where to start, but let's go:
(1) Rainforest Alliance does not certify Fair Trade products. (They do have their own, separate, certification service for goods that are "produced in compliance with strict guidelines protecting the environment, wildlife, workers and local communities".)
(2) TransFair USA (note spelling) is the sole US certifier of Fair Trade products.
(3) Fair Trade certified products do not necessarily cost more than their traditional corporate-capitalist equivalents. In fact, they often cost less due to cutting out unproductive middlemen. (The Fair Trade certified coffee that we get for my household, for example, costs about the same as the traditional equivalent, sometimes a little more, and sometimes a little less.)
(4) Producers do not need to be located in the Third World to get Fair Trade certification.
(5) Fair Trade workers are not "controlled by leftist organizations". This assertion is not just baseless but bizarre. It is particularly strange considering how much control corporations typically exert over their employees--whereas Fair Trade workers are members of democratic cooperatives.
TransFair USA certifies that producers are organized democratically as cooperatives rather than corporations, that they produce their products in an environmentally sound manner (often organically), that they receive a fair price that allows them to make a decent living, and that a certain amount of their proceeds goes back into community development and other humanitarian projects. This certification is done on the market without government involvement.
Liebling apparently believes that all this somehow contradicts the "politics of individualism and free markets". But it seems to me that Liebling must be using these phrases as Newspeak for a state-corporate oligopoly that bears little resemblance to a truly free market.
The Fair Trade certification by TransFair USA, on the other hand, utilizes the market to allow consumers to make purchasing decisions that are in consonance with their values, including freedom, equality, and environmental responsibility. There's nothing there for libertarians not to like.
Whatever failings Whole Foods and its founder, John Mackey, may have, they should be commended for putting their business to work promoting libertarian ideals by selling Fair Trade certified products.
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I agree with your point: when leftists use the market rather than state coercion to effect social change, we should applaud them, not condemn them.
BTW, Sam's Club, the warehouse store unit of that old leftist bogeyman Walmart, sells Fair Trade and Rain Forest Alliance coffee under its own label. (Except WalMart has endangered its bogeman status by endorsing government-run health care.)
Who are you - or indeed anyone - to make ethical judgement about the choice of corporate organisation? Co-ops are no more democratic (or less for that matter) than other forms. They also act to exclude sole traders or individual private farmers - however constituted. Co-ops are also producer focused (in your example) making them more likely to support anti-market practices. Whole Foods can do whatever they want but "fair trade" is nothing more nor less than a sop to sad western consumers and represents - as it becomes institutionalised - an extreme anti-trade measure.
There is no reason people, including labor, can organize any way they want, including co-ops, etc., and in other ways that narrow minded observers may disdainfully call "collective", as long as those involved consent to the organization. That is part of our freedom that Libertarianism is about. The key is that force is left out of the equation. They can market what they want, in the manner they want. that is the free market. Producing and marketing collectively is no sin, just an option.
On the other hand, Corporations are forced on us by the backing of the State. Their chartered limited liability is not a choice, we are forced to honor it by law. If we are disadvantaged or lose because of it, that is the way the system is set up.
You're mention of the "state-corporate oligolopy" is certainly valid. It has pervaded every industry and is the dominant anti-market condition today.
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