thelung

You would have made the imperialists proud. Its funny that you criticized someone else for bringing up slavery yet you use some of the same arguments that slaveowners did: that they were providing a much better life for their slaves than existed in Africa or that the blacks would be able to create if they were not being "cared for" by the whites.

You are turning the issue on its head by ignoring that when two parties enter into a so called free-market, the one that comes with more capital or brute strength has the power of coercion over the weaker parties. By promoting fair trade we seek to replace that situation by supporting democratic dialoge and agreement between workers and consumers in order to create a fair exchange that is mutually benefitial to both parties. We resist the use of governments or corporate juggernauts to impose economic restrictions on weaker countries and buisnesses, and artificially low prices and wages in so called free trade agreements.

Is it a perfect solution? No. Has it made a direct and positive impact on health and living conditons in workplaces around the world? Yes.

skanking biker

You attempt at an analogy is futile and laughable.

Slaves were "forced labor" They werent paid---they were compelled to come against their will.

Big difference. Slaves had no "choice" but to work for free-they couldnt leave.

If i agree to sell my labor for a price offered by a firm--that transaction is "fair"--its voluntary --freely entered into, not coerced. If i dont like what i am being paid, i find a different company. Whats not "fair" is being coerced into a union if i dont want to join one or being bound by terms of an employment contract that are imposed by the state.


Then again, in your marxist, "progressive" view, anyone that doesnt have a nanny commie full weflare state, free health insurance and 40 days off a year is a "slave"

Go read some economic reports on the german economy---its failing b/c there are so many restrictions, government imposed mandates and other regulations that it is virtually cost prohibitive for a firm to hire new employees or retain older ones. They've also got a health care system that gives people mental health days and paid time at the spa.


In my system---each purchaser and seller decides what is "fair" by agreeing to enter into the transaction. In your system some bueacratic bean counter limits my freedom of choice to imposing arbitrary restrictions that reflect his personal opinion of what is "fair"---my system is freedom, yours is tryanny.

skanking biker

How is it "coercion" if the weaker party agrees to it? If i want to sell my products at x price---what right do you have to tell me my prices are too high or too low. what you are trying to do is to restrict my freedom of choice to purchase what products i wish to purchase and to sell my labor for what price i am willing to do so. Your are trying to restrict my right to sell the fruit of my labor--my goods at a price a so desire.

Your "unequal bargaining power" argument was superfically appealing fails to account for the fact that in a free market no one forces a party to enter into any transaction they do not wish to enter into. I will agree this model breaks down when you do not have a free market but instead have a oligopoly of large business that are able to raise artiifical barriers to entry and collude to restrict the product market and collude to artificially lower the price of labor in the labor market. The solution to this is agressive enforcement of our antitrust laws to ensure there is enough competition amoung business both in the labor and goods market that when a business adopts prices of rtheir goods that are too high for consumer (or prices for labor too low for its workers) that consumers of products and sellers of labor have other willing purchasers of their goods/services. The solution is more freedom not more regulation on sales and labor transactions.

Before you label e a right winger, let it be known that i do not operate under the delusion of the mass of misguieded so-called "conservatives" that we live in a free-market. What we live in is a corporate-syndicate oligopoly where a few powerful businesses are able to exert market power to distort the natural equilibrium between supply and demand.

Again, the solution is to break up the larger businesses so that instead of a few powerfullly aligned business interests, we return to a society of atomistic competition where no firm has any considerable amount of market power. this results in more freedom of choice.

ink1373

its "coercion" because often times the corporations pay out more wages than the entire GDP of said country. when that happens, the corporation then has more power than the government of the country, and can destroy the national economy if they leave, and they often do leave. as soon as there's any sign of employee organization, desire for living wages, or refusing to take birth control. (pregnant woman can't sew as efficiently, and often take leaves of absence)

investigate the term "sparrow" as it relates to this.

of course, maybe i'm wrong, and working 70 hours a week to feed a third of your family is okey dokey. maybe those companies aren't taking advantage of the fact that they offer the only jobs in an otherwise subsistence farming area of the world. maybe the employees are happy with being strip searched every night to make sure they aren't stealing product (a unit might be worth a year's supply of food)...

and so on.

but then, "skanking biker" maybe you're just a classy kinda guy, who wants to immanetize the eschaton.

killsurfcity

a-*******-men!

killsurfcity

personally i don't believe real change is possible. we're reeling toward the end of the world, it's up to you whether it's a rollercoaster ride or a car crash. la fin du monde is a great beer by the way.

thelung

I was not directly relating slaves to wage slaves, merely showing that the arguments in favor of both State and Capitalist imposed forms of oppression are quite simmilar. Anyway, when someone is living week to week and trying to support a family there is no easy way to find another employer before they starve. Agricultural workers have it even worse when they either have to contract themselves to the demands of multinational agri-corporations or be run out of buisness completely by coercive market forces (they cannot afford to sell their product for as low a price as the monopolies and multinational buisnesses can) and have their farmlands bought out. The corporations and WTO have more economic power than the state in most developing countries, their forced contracts can be just as bad or worse than authoritarian regimes.
Marxist? Hardly. If we are talking about ideals here, I would see an end to the state and to capitalism. The Zapatista's focus on community dialog, autonomy and grassroots democracy are pointing in the right direction.

I'm done arguing, this forum is for bikes.

skanking biker

As I said:


let it be known that i do not operate under the delusion of the mass of misguieded so-called "conservatives" that we live in a free-market. What we live in is a corporate-syndicate oligopoly where a few powerful businesses are able to exert market power to distort the natural equilibrium between supply and demand.

Again, the solution is to break up the larger businesses so that instead of a few powerfullly aligned business interests, we return to a society of atomistic competition where no firm has any considerable amount of market power. this results in more freedom of choice.
===

i think we agree at least on this much---

iBarna

Gotta love message boards. The OP asked a clear, polite question, and within two pages, the thread degenerates into senseless arguing. To anyone who has a problem with the original question, or the motives behind it: you ride a frickin bicycle with one gear and possibly no brakes, thinking that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. You have no business questioning others' motives or preferences.

Placid Casual

Your "system" is unethical because it only takes into account the seller and buyer of a product, not the worker who makes it. The way you phrased it in the beginning, slavery could have fit perfectly into your "system." In fact, price-gouging still fits perfectly into your "system," even now that you've modified it to exclude forced labor (which is awfully big of you). The person who pays $100.00 for a can of propane cooking oil during a hurricane does so "willingly" only in the sense that he can pay the ethically outrageous price or starve. Likewise, the worker in a third-world country (or, more and more with the Wal-Martization of America's workforce, in this country) can take the dangerous job with long hours, low pay, and no grievance procedure, or he can starve in a system that has been rigged to make it impossible to survive without taking such a job.

The free-market supporter fools himself into thinking that this situation is acceptable because the buyer of price-gouged goods or the "seller" of labor to a sweatshop was technically willing. This argument has all the credibility and weight of the boss's claim that because the girl in the mailroom didn't resist his advances, she must have wanted it Few people find these phony arguments convincing.

Incidentally, your rationalizations of Chinese sweatshop labor aren't just similar to the rationalizations given in the American South for slavery while it went on, they are exactly the same, right down to the patronizing claim that slavery in America was an improvement over "primitive" life in Africa and the assertion that cotton would be prohibitively expensive to produce without slave labor. That's why your writing was so ridiculously easy to parody.

wangster

You're all idiots! f*** fair trade and just get THESE

clipless and the jam!

Have any of you ever had actual interaction with a chinese worker or even been to china? Or are you just regurgitating what you've read somewhere? I'm not taking either side, I just think this whole argument/debate is moot and you guys should just recognize the jamness that are the Adidas 2006 adiStar Super Pro Classic Cycling Shoe!

Placid Casual

Break up? Break up? What are you, some kind of socialist? Jeez, I'll bet you advocate federal regulation of between-meal snacking, you nannystate-mongering collectivist. Sheesh. "Break up," he says. Man, what issue of the Revolutionary Worker did you get that idea from, you tree-hugging ACLU member?

Placid Casual

I've never been to South Africa, but yet somehow I feel comfortable in declaring that apartheid was downright impolite. I've also never had the pleasure of visiting Petrograd, but nevertheless I feel little trepidation about publicly claiming that its winters are quite chilly.

killsurfcity

fücking crazy hippies! there's no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future! no future!

r-dub

*can't believe I'm getting involved in this*

but yeah, I have had lots of interactions with folks who make our shoes and apparel. I've worked with groups that have brought garment workers here on speaking tours from China, Taiwan, Korea, Honduras, and Mexico. Doesn't sound like such a great life. Most are 'forced' into the work by (IMF, private bank, or central gov't) reforms that crash the value of their crops and mean that staying home will bring starvation. They are sometimes chained to machines or benches, but more often threatened and abused in more subtle ways. Women are routinely sexually harrassed and/or assaulted. There are often monopsony conditions in factory towns (one employer who therefore has complete power to set wages and conditions) so the workers have no ability to choose whom to work for.

As I (randomly and luckily) was born into a rich country (where even my poor family had vastly more than most other folks in the world) I can choose to support (in order):

Artisans and worker-owned shops
small family-run shops
shops with well-documented high labor standards
unionized workplaces

Much bike-related manufacturing (at least at the level that we usually discuss (i.e. non-walmart bikes)) qualifies at one of these levels, because proper treatment of employees correlates highly with good quality control.

wangster

I was half kidding and mainly just trying to provoke people. I'm chinese and I know a good amount of the goings on, but I don't like to get into these things because you can talk till yer blue in the face, it's not gonna change anyone's opinion.

sers

i would assume that the sidi would fall under fair trade shoes, aren't they handmade in italy by virgins?

Analog

Wow, Didn't expect this much of a conversation out of my question.
That's cool, though, I think it's important to talk about the issues.

Really, what it comes down to for me, is that there are certain things that I cannot make/find for myself, such as shoes, bike parts, coffee, the majority of my food, etc. And for those things, I care enough about them being responsibly produced that I'm going to take the time to find products that are. I eat an organic/vegetarian diet, drink fair-trade coffee, don't own a car, don't buy new clothes, etc.

So, one of the only things that I do actually have a problem finding, is good shoes.
Anyways, just my 2cents.

r-dub

one (often expensive, but amazing) option is custom-made shoes. You can find someone who makes good (vegan, if you want) shoes and ask them to make something with an extra-firm sole and proper proportions for your pedals. Can still be found in the US for 200-300, but it's a dying artform. If you take care of them, they will last forever, can can be continuously re-soled by a good cobbler when they get worn out.

I was lucky enough to be working in Oventic, Xiapas when the Zapatistas opened their first shoe micro-factory (zapateria zapatista!) I had three pairs of shoes (boots, loafers, and casual shoes that I can bike in) custom made for about $35/pair, and that's the gringo (openly adjusted for 1st world income) price! Money is split between the shoe making collective and support for the rest of the community.

cyclezealot

Nike. They are the king of outsourcing. Fair trade. I need do more research about this
subject. Can't buy a truly American made car. I had given up. I had thought about the only union made shoes left in North America were a couple varieties of work boots.
I gave up on shoes when New Balance went for slave labor. A major disappointment.

Analog

r-dub - Zapatista shoes, that sounds incredible! Now there's a product I could feel good about buying. I wish I were living close enough to find something like that.

Landgolier

No offense to anybody, but fair Trade coffee is a scam. The farmer gets less than a quarter of the premium the consumer pays. The rest goes right into the corporate bottom line, minus what Transfair skims off for use of the logo. I could give you an elaborate quasi-Marxist explanation of what happens when big companies soak bourgie people for their $$ and then throw a scrap to the workers, but I think the term "punk'd" pretty much sums it up.

adamkell

"Fair Trade coffee" means beans bought for at least $1.26/lb. That's about twice the regular market price, no?

I'm not seeing the scam.

(soooo off-topic)

StevieT

ah! i've got a pair of those boots too! you must of been in oventic back in the day, r-dub, cause i got mine in 98, and the shop was in full swing.

i hear its really changed over the years, and the community is looking great.

Landgolier

Well, bought from the co-op from that price, the farmers can get substantially less but I'm not in the mood to debate coffee co-op management practices. The 2005 average market price was about 90 cents, which is higher than in years past, but this is mostly an effect of the coffee glut drying up as harvests come back to sane levels and (more importantly) some of the huge excess of producers get out of the market. It's worth noting that some of the NGO's that are now behind fair trade were the same ones who were working with small farmers in SE Asia over the last 20 years to help them produce coffee as a cash crop, which is a big part of what caused the glut in the first place. You also have to keep in mind that the fair trade stuff is pretty high-grade coffee, which goes for more like $1.15 a pound, so to compare apples to apples you can't use the 90 cent average; it includes the folgers-grade stuff, which is like 90% of the market anyway

So anyway, it's really hard to say what premium "fair trade" coffee commands at retail, but I think we could agree that a buck per 12 ounces (the standard size for premium retail coffee) is a conservative estimate. So the consumer pays $1.33 per pound more for something the farmer's co-op only got maybe 11 cents more for. So who got the rest of that money? All the businesses between the consumer and the farmer. Keeping in mind that our estimate of the premium is conservative in the first place, they got 92% of the money the consumer was trying to direct toward the farmer. I'm not making a moral judgement on any of those transactions, just saying, if you think buying fair trade crap helps developing country farmers, you are getting ripped off.

Coffee is the most obvious example, but it's much the same with all the other "fair trade" certified goods. There is also plenty of skullduggery going on, where the big fair trade marketers have been trying to stonewall other companies from entering the market as coffee prices continue to rise and it becomes even cheaper to pay the fair trade rate. Gotta love collusion and anti-trust violations in the name of "fair trade."