FYI — I wasn’t breast fed :P And my mama drinks Folgers. Connection? I think so. We’ve been, for so long, conditioned to think only, or at least mainly, about prices. To my mom, coffee’s a caffeine-delivery device, and the cheaper you can get it, the better.

It’s hard changing a mid-fifties woman’s habits, but my mom also really appreciates it whenever I buy her coffee. It costs me only about $10 to get her a pre-ground (she doesn’t have a grinder) container of fair trade coffee. And while she may still think of fair trade coffee as bougie coffee, she sure appreciates it when her daugher buys it for her :)

It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not just sweatshop made goods and unfair labor practices that allows walmart to keep its prices low. it’s also its revolutionary distribution system, which relies on economies of scale. part of the reason that fairly made products are more expensive is simply because there is less consumer demand for them. if everyone insisted on fair trade products, they’d be much much cheaper.

so, those that can afford to pay fair prices are ethically obligated to. companies are ethically obligated to try to provide ethical products at a fair price. eventually, as these habits provide a more fair distribution of wealth, and more and more people receive the fair wage for their labor, then more and more people will be able to afford to pay the fair price for other people’s labor.

for instance, let’s say me and thousands others who can afford it buy union-made clothes and fair trade coffee, giving those companies a big share of the market and allowing them to take advantage of efficiencies of scale without affecting their ethical practices. then, those unionized workers can now afford to buy fair trade coffee. meanwhile, coffee pickers in costa rica can afford to buy union made clothes and the cycle goes on, lifting everyone up with it.

this is not socialism or communism. this is straightforward, run-of-the-mill democratic capitalism, at least in theory. but capitalism is not working correctly in practice because we have a worldwide economy but no worldwide democracy. even in our own country, our democracy is broken. this results in a myriad of inequities that are throwing a wrench in the free market. in practice, the free market cannot exist without legal protections. that’s why the US anti-trust laws are a good thing. that’s why US labor laws are a good thing. that’s why the 13th amendment to the constitution is a good thing. this is not communism, this is red, white, and blue, flag-waving, all-american democracy.

on the contrary, those who say that it’s fine if we disenfranchise the powerless, those who say it’s ok to allow a few rich people to exploit the majority, those are the people that are unpatriotic. those are the people that are dangerous to this country.

I basically agree with Jen. I’m a chocolate addict, and feel guilty that since fair trade chocolate generally costs 3-6 times as much (where I live) I seldom eat it.

In 1999 a UK company tried to bring out a fair trade chocolate bar that would sell for 10% more than the Cadbury’s equivalent. During the three weeks I was there I pretty much subsisted on this stuff. Personally I would happily pay 50% more for fair trade, and I am sure plenty of people would pay 20% more.

The problem is the economies of scale. The bar was off the market by the time I went back in 2003, I think because they simply didn’t have the capital to maintain the losses until they reached a large enough market share. That’s the core problem for fair trade products – the people behind them almost never have the capital to allow them to reach a critical size required to get costs down.

I do still think that quality is an issue, but perhaps this is more due to the fact that the fair trade products created right now are generally aimed more towards the bougie market than to a more economically diverse public. The two issues definitely need to be addressed hand in hand.

And yes, it really seems like the people who try to make fair trade more widely avaliable really don’t have the capital to stick it out until their customer base reaches a break-even point. This is where I wonder if big corporations, i.e. Nestle, could start to make a difference — Not so much because they care about fair trade, but because they care about tapping a new market, as evidenced by Nestle’s new foray into fair trade coffee…