end of capitalism.

[menthel]

j1979, you really have no idea, do you? Your arguements are rather off, especially as you can be a capitalist and ethical. If it concerns you then buy fair trade- I try to whenever possible.

And if dustment went on strike the army would step in. Not something that could happen with striking doctors. Not that doctors would these days- you might get a work to rule but our social conscience tends to kick in.

Really- your arguements are flawed and that of a GSCE student and no more.

[j1979]

You can't keep moving the goal posts.

Farmers don't HAVE to provide coffee for 1st world nations. They could use the land to grow crops for local enconomies, but the fact is that they make more money selling coffee.
.

he didn't have a choice, coffee plantations were sold as an ideal to the growers many years ago, the traders come and take the coffee and exchange for $$$ the same traders then sell food back for the same $$$$.

they couldn't start any other crops any more than i can pull a 2 bed flat out of my arse. they were trapped and it was deliberate.

Fortunately the grower in the report is now part of a co-op and life is improving for him although 2 of his children did die. The coffee chain now sells fair trade goods also, which is a small step in the right direction.

[menthel]

he didn't have a choice, coffee plantations were sold as an ideal to the growers many years ago, the traders come and take the coffee and exchange for $$$ the same traders then sell food back for the same $$$$.

they couldn't start any other crops any more than i can pull a 2 bed flat out of my arse. they were trapped and it was deliberate.

Fortunately the grower in the report is now part of a co-op and life is improving for him although 2 of his children did die. The coffee chain now sells fair trade goods also, which is a small step in the right direction.

You don't seem to see the flaw in your own arguement. There can be ethical treatment within a capitalist system. Your ideas drag everyone DOWN to the same level rather than up.

[j1979]

And if dustment went on strike the army would step in. Not something that could happen with striking doctors. Not that doctors would these days- you might get a work to rule but our social conscience tends to kick in.

Really- your arguements are flawed and that of a GSCE student and no more.

get a grip, im talking about a hypothetical world!!

[menthel]

get a grip, im talking about a hypothetical world!!

And therefore one that does not have any bearing on this discussion. You need to get a grip my friend. You are living in your own hypothetical world!

[j1979]

You don't seem to see the flaw in your own arguement. There can be ethical treatment within a capitalist system. Your ideas drag everyone DOWN to the same level rather than up.

yes there can be a fairer world, thats why i fight for it.. thats why we get somewhere.

it wouldn't of happened if people didn't fight for it.

[menthel]

yes there can be a fairer world, thats why i fight for it.. thats why we get somewhere.

it wouldn't of happened if people didn't fight for it.

A lot of us are in our own way. However you see to be advocating some pol-potesque society dragged back down to the lowest common denominator.

[j1979]

And therefore one that does not have any bearing on this discussion. You need to get a grip my friend. You are living in your own hypothetical world!

sorry maybe i imagined a world where people die from starvation and curable diseases..

[menthel]

sorry maybe i imagined a world where people die from starvation and curable diseases..

Hehe, you really are in a bizarre little place of your own. That, as you describe is the real world, not the strange example you used in your hypothetical situation. No one denies that there are inequalities in the world and that we all need to do something for that.

You really need to think before you type, you are tying yourself in all sorts of knots!

[b0redom]

There's no arguing with some people, and for that reason alone - I'm out.....

[j1979]

....

[j1979]

Hehe, you really are in a bizarre little place of your own. That, as you describe is the real world, not the strange example you used in your hypothetical situation. No one denies that there are inequalities in the world and that we all need to do something for that.

You really need to think before you type, you are tying yourself in all sorts of knots!

if you cant distinguish between the hypothetical situation i made up and the real experiences i was talking about, thats your issue mate.

You are living in your own hypothetical world!

the above quote is probaly why your confuddled

[menthel]

if you cant distinguish between the hypothetical situation i made up and the real experiences i was talking about, thats your issue mate.

I think you need to stop mixing up the 2 and then trying to argue them from strange standpoints- you make no sense.

Some advice- some of your views/beliefs come from a good place but they have become confused with jealousy etc. Take a step back and evaluate what you think and why you think it. This will help make your discussions coherent. They certainly are not now. And with that little pointer I can no longer be bothered to argue with you on the internets as at the moment as it is like banging your head against a brick wall . Have fun!

[j1979]

I can no longer be bothered to argue with you on the internets as at the moment as it is like banging your head against a brick wall . Have fun!

no worries. but im open to your ideas, i just don't see the world the way you do. perhaps because i don't live in London.

[j1979]

I reckon you're not the sharpest tool in the box.

Are you seriously telling me that you think that Doctors are dustbin men are interchangable? If there was a mass dustbin man strike, people would take their own rubbish to the dump, or councils would have other people come in and do the work.

No disrespect to dustbin men, they do an essential job, but it doesn't require years of training.

If all the doctors in the UK went on strike, you would have mass fatalities. Who's going to prescribe drugs? Who is going to set bones? Who is going to operate on people? Who would man the A+E to patch up people who had been in road traffic accidents?

sorry mate i said GPs not Doctors!

and all the GPs work could be done by other medical staff! like i said its hypothetical anyway.

your come back cant be "we will hire more Binmen". the job just doesn't get done in the hypothetical situation.

[TheAnimus]

the dustbin man example is perfect.

two parallel universes; in one of these all the GPs went on strike. and in the other all the dustbin men went on strike. in both universes people would die as a result! im willing to bet that more would die in the dustbin men strike. and im guessing here, but i recon there are probably about equal numbers of both GPs and dustbin men/women

what do you recon?

Quite easily from illness that can't be treated. The vast majority of the population is capable of emptying rubbish bins. It takes YEARs to become a doctor, even then they often have to refer to consultants which have taken multiple decades of continued learning to get too the knowledge state they have.

A more interesting example is fire fighters, when they strike the army (who are paid less) come in, and have to manage fighting fires with inferior gear, and without spending all their time training to fight fires. This is a good example of how strike can be ignored if the quality of the work done isn't good enough.

Oooh Fair Trade, this is one of my pet hates. Anything that as a brand has to mention something that you would assume, is by definition somethign created by a lieing sack of poo. I call this Alex's rule of how marketiers are all lying runts.

So first off, what is un-fair about current trade in food produce? the CAP the Common Agricultural -lets not let france have to sack some farmers regardless of what it does to the poor people- Policy. This has the frankly perverse effect of meaning that in africa a tin of french tomatoto's will cost less than a tin of locally farmed ones. Given the difference in Land, Labour etc, this is just plain wrong and unfair.

Its the direct result of someone meddling with the freemarket, the french, rather than just drinking wine, eating cheese and surendering have caused a skew, by subsidising their produce to save a small industry, they are inflicting poverty and preventing economic developement in much poorer countries, contries that would better benefit from the jobs and money (because it would be a bigger relative jump... this point is highly debateable).

So what does fair trade do to stop this? Nothing. Oh dear.

There was an intresting case study done on a major trainer manafacturer in Vietnam i was reading whilst at uni, here Nike where paying something like $0.30 an hour. This ment the labour cost in a trainer worth $100 retail was less than $1. I bet your going to be thinking OMG they should pay them more. In fact no, they shouldn't be. Quite the reverse, they had caused such problem to the local economy because everyone wanted to work there, their average wage was simply too high for the local population to absorb. Teachers and Doctors could all earn more at the factory. Why on earth work a much harder job, where you get to see your kids less, when you can have an easyer job, and spend more time with your kids. The result was the local economy around it collapsed, the only surviving economy was a service based one, devoted to serving those who worked at the factory, as they where the only ones who could afford the services.

The coal miners. During this time of change it was found that coal could be MUCH easyerly obtained by mining in other parts of the world, often instead of going thousands of meters in dangerous underground labyrinths they could simply excavate with a JCB. This had a nock on effect to the price of coal, it became cheaper, so the miners in the UK had to be paid less.

But that didn't go down well with some people, its understandably hard to be told your job can be done a lot easier else where, in a place where people work all day for less than you get an hour. So they put the nail in the coffin. Either the government would of had to put tax on imported coal, subsidies UK coal (see french and the CAP been un-fair) or let the industry perish. The latter was the only logical choice thats fair for the world, and the UK in the long term. However luckily for the (then labour) government they really speeded up the demise by striking demanding more pay. At a time when the work you do is worth less, asking for a pay rise is a great way to stop you having a job tomorrow. By the time the strike ended, the UK coal industry had been devistated, largely replaced with african coal.

well you could call it getting paid i suppose! i wrote a report on fair trade some years back, focused on a major coffee shop chain. Well to cut a long story short, a coffee that was sold at the time for £1.75 per cup of which less then 1p went to the grower, quite a bit less then 1p actually. it worked out as 1/1000th of a penny per £1.75 cup.

it changed the way i thought forever. There was no hope for the grower, or his children for a future or even basic education. so sorry if everyone sees me as a "commie" but ive seen what our life in the west does to people in poorer parts of the world.

So lets get back to the BRAND that is Fair Trade. Ok why don't i like it been a brand? Well if its a concept then it should be awarded to anyones produce which meets requirements, not just those that pay them to be.

But more importantly, taking Coffee, the reason its so cheap is because there is millions of hectares of land it can grow on, where labour is cheap, people are so poor many are starving. So what happens if you try to pay more than the market rate? Remeber the trainer example (very extreme) or the french example? You in effect start playing god, saying this area should live, this one should die. In the coal example it made sense for UK to loose and Africa to win, because its easier to mine? But with this fair trade concept that choice isn't made rationally by who can do it the cheapest (which is a key concept of 'efficency' in economic theory) been a fair measure, but by some company.

I trust letting everyone decide via freemarket, more than letting one person decide via the dictatorship that is Fair Trade (which is probably is, if you can get it).

So what do i say we do instead? Simple the countries involved must bring in, and enforce basic laws, children should be school, people shouldn't be coersced into working etc. The problem is how to persuade the countries involved into doing this? It took us in england been at the forefront of the economic and industrial revolution to be in a situation to bring in such pleasantries. Putting on trade restrictions wouldn't help would it?

So hopefully that will of explained the folly of fair trade. Its a brand, a most cunning in an evil emotive way that regrettably seams to be fooling more than just the average Gardian reading Pot smocking Che Gavura shirt wearing uni student, who's funded by daddy.