what? now suddenly youve changed your mind about it? its the same... like the old american farmer... for the last 100 years... sob story after sob story... farmers going out of buisness... they cant compete. now.. its happpening again... globally. sure in the long run... its a good thing.. but during the transition.... people hurt... and suffer... and die. there is no security blanket for them. not then... not now. that is why globilization sucks ass.... because it is heartless, and ruthless. -MT
Please tell me about the systems wherein no participant displays heartless and ruthless behavior. I have a feeling you know of none. If you look at bad behavior in a globalized economy, and blame it on globalization, you have made an error. Many people are evil. Therefore evil people are found in any system which contains.... people! If you want to blame the behavior on the system, then all systems "suck ass". The miracle of globalization is that it brings the most benefit to the most people, and the evil dudes get less of the pie. Please look at feudal systems, where a single human owned the entire country, every resource, and every human being. Totalitarians, dictators, fascists... these are examples of one extreme. I put communism right up there with them, because every communist system I have seen put into practice ended up with a totalitarian regime of filthy rich assholes lording it over the peasants. Only with democracy, capitalism, and the global interconnect of these systems between the countries that possess them do we see anything which resembles a meritocracy. That's why the poor within these systems which have motivation to work are the ones who support these ideals. Which is why the Red states in my country are the poorest states, and they are the states which honor the ideals of European Liberalism: Democracy and Capitalism. Meanwhile, the unmotivated poor, and the guilty rich are the Blue states, which support the ideals of fascism and distributed wealth. This latter group is so evil, that even though I am an atheist, am anti-gun (extremely so), am pro-choice, am pro immigration, am anti-war... even though on almost every issue I align with the Democrats, I more often than not find myself voting against them. Because their economic and political philosophies are an evil inspired by naiveté'. An evil worse than the combined sacrifices I make when I vote against them.
Coffee business is a little complicated. Most African countries that produce Coffee are not supported by their government. I have a friend who has a Coffee importing business. It took 6 months to get a Coffee sample. There is no standardized collection and separation of Coffee grades. Most importantly, there is no common marketing strategies. Some cooperatives exploit their own farmers. Therefore there is a lot of uncertainity and misunderstanding between growers and buyers that causes all these problems. Have you noticed that when Oil prices go up at the well, the price is reflected at the pump immidiately while if the price falls at the well, it takes 2 months to be reflected at the pump. Same thing happens to Coffee too....
otheadp, That is interesting, but there is no need to pay the farmers as much as lawyers get paid. You just increase what you paid them relative to what is paid here. For instance, if where you live farmers are paid $1, then you paid the equivalent $1 to the farmers in the third world country (not $1 of your money!). There's no need to pay more then that, and that would be fair. Also, as spidergoat said, higher prices of fair trade coffee has to do with their low volume. Low demand for fair trade will make the price of fair trade higher.
