Posted by Jack Lee
(ALERT) A few weeks ago I entered a local coffee shop and ordered a cup Guatemalan Dark and this young guy with a pony tail was working behind the counter and said, “You will be pleased to know this comes from “fair trade” coffee beans.” He seemed quite happy to make this announcement until I asked, and what do you mean by “fair trade”? Apparently his previous customers just gave approving nods. He stammered for a moment and said, “Well, I think this means that the people picking the beans get a fair wage.” Ok, so what do you consider a fair wage? I asked. He was at a loss to explain although he tried, but he really didn’t know. Then he fell back on, “All of our coffee beans are fair trade items!” And he smiled. Which answered nothing and brought me back to my first question, but I could see this was going nowhere, so I didn’t pursue it; I just nodded and with a smile said, “Oh that’s really good to know.”
Now I read the Mayor of Chico is considering making our city a “fair trade” town. Will the city residents all be good head bobbers, smile and let the City openly endorse a socialist movement?
Fair trade is a socialist term for price fixing and you know what price fixing does? It denies or impedes competition, it stiffles creativity, hurts entrepenuers, affects productivity, raises the end cost to consumers and it ultimately raises inflation.
This idea of being a Fair Trade town is another touchy feely idea that is about as clever as raising the minimum wage to bring people out of poverty. Minimum wage was established in 1938 the and it has failed to achieve any of it’s goals; but despite it’s many failures democrats have embraced the concept till this very day.
The Fair Trade Town concept began in Socialist England in 2001 in Garstang, Lancashire, under the initiative of Bruce Crowther, a local Oxfam supporter, and the Garstang Oxfam Group. Oxfam has recently interferred with Starbucks over buying coffee beans from Ethiopia. Starbucks said their trade deal would eventually bring in more money for the Ethiopians and criticized Oxfam as being undemocratic and economically simplistic in a way that defies the law of economics and this could eventually make matters worse in Ethiopia instead of better.
The idea of Fair Trade is indeed quite simplistic, rather than rely on a world market price for a commodity there is a fixed minimum price. That is an artificial price support and it is very much socialistic; in fact many of the sponsors for Fair Trade Towns are Socialist organizations. No wonder that our far left radical Mayor, Andy Holcomb, would like this idea! It makes perfect sense to a good socialist.