How to Improve Fair Trade: #8

8. All aspects of trade and production are open to public accountability

I am concerned that this requirement favors big business over small business.  In order to be prepared for public accountability a producer has to be very diligent and keep track of lots of different procedures and exchanges within their business.  If a producer is using resources to be accountable she is not using resources in other ways.  To divert resources to such tasks is a lot to ask of a small business and even more to ask of the large number of small informal businesses in the low-income countries.

When all aspects of trade are also subject to public accountability, the hardships on small businesses will be accentuated even more.  And as more resources are used on complying with accountability, the less resources are used in improving health and environmental conditions in personal lives and purchasing mobile phones or clothing.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #7

7. Equal employment opportunities are provided for all

This principle sounds good though I don’t understand how employment opportunities can just be provided.  A producer offers a job to someone when there is work to be done.  It would be silly if a small coffee farmer had to provide jobs to a bunch of CEOs when they are completely unnecessary to his workplace.  On top of this, many jobs are very specialized and require people with the requisite skill set, talent and information are spread amongst the diversity of all of the people in the global village. 

Does this mean that an NFL Football team should provide employment for Chinese and Polish to an equal extent that it provides employment for African Americans?  Should a feminist organization hire an equal number of men and women?  Should a small family business hire an equal number of people from outside of the family?  Should a business in San Francisco also provide opportunities for people who choose to live in New Mexico?  Should low-income producers provide work for high-income workers?  Should an organization like Global Exchange provide work for those who think the oil industry has been extremely beneficial to society to the same extent as those who think it has not?

It is important that people have an equal opportunity to try to get the available jobs, but one cannot just assume jobs will be provided to all.  It is unfair to ask producers to provide employment to people that don’t improve their business.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #6

6. Working conditions are healthy and safe

Once again, I agree with this principle, and I am concerned that it places more importance on the health and safety of the workplace than in people’s personal lives.  Not all of life is about work.

For example, if an employer is required to make an improvement to her factory, she has fewer resources to spend on her workers.  Her workers will now have fewer resources to improve the condition of where they live.  Often, in low-income areas there is very little access to clean water and the houses have dirt floors.  If the workers had more resources to use in their personal lives, they could improve the conditions around their house and also improve health and safety.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #5

5. Sustainable production techniques are encouraged

I am in agreement with this principle, and I am concerned that it limits the advancement toward a sustainable society.  By focusing on sustainable production one discounts the benefits that a higher standard of living can add to sustainability.  The benefits of a higher standard of living can be reached while only a limited number of sustainable production techniques are present.  And in general, people with a higher standard of living enjoy products that are produced in a more sustainable way.  Many sustainable technologies are still quite expensive to purchase, and buyers and producers have to make the decisions if these fit their personal budgets.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #4

4. Producers have access to financial and technical assistance

This principle also assumes that a producer’s rights are more important than a buyer’s rights.  This is not fair.  Many low-income buyers also find themselves in economically disadvantaged positions.

Furthermore, a person or a small group will have to receive a position of authority in order to decide who will receive financial and technical assistance.  Whoever is in this position will be the target of producers and special interests that wish to receive preferred status.  There is no reason to believe that these people will be any less targeted than the current politicians or that, over time, these interest groups wouldn’t find there way into these positions themselves to make what decisions served them best.

Also, I am having a hard time seeing the difference between this principle and the current subsidy system.  Subsidies are meant to help out producers in need and the current subsidy system has been overtaken by special interests, which has, in turn, raised the prices for local buyers and greatly disadvantaged low-income farmers abroad.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #3

3. Buyers and producers trade under direct long-term relationships

Buyers and producers are unique individuals.  Each industry, from coffee farming to fishing to metallurgy to textiles to tourism etc., is also unique.  All of these industries must take into account different factors, from weather to preferences to buying cycles, and they must do so with limited resources.  There are an uncountable number of ways a trade relationship can be arranged with all of the different possible variables. 

To only support ‘direct long-term relationships’ presumes that someone has a better understanding of all these special trades than the buyers and producers who are closest to their products and trades.  First, let’s consider ‘long-term relationships’ using a textile producer who produces a fabric that quickly experiences a change in demand; let’s say the fabric goes out of fashion.  In this situation, a long-term contract would benefit the producers, as they would have no one else to sell their product to if it wasn’t for this long-term relationship.  The buyer would be stuck buying a product in which there was no longer any use for.  In this case, this principle favors the producers over the buyers.  The buyers will be hurt.  Similarly, if other conditions were present, the producers could also be the ones hurt.

Second, I am unsure what is meant by ‘direct relationships’.  There are many scenarios where direct relationships are not beneficial.  Do we ever wonder why vending machines have a slot for a quarter rather than one slot for the farmer’s bale of hay and another for the shoemaker’s leather shoe and so on?  Money is a technology that works wonderfully at saving us from the burden of the millions of direct relationships we would need to establish all throughout the global village in order to live a typical day.

Another example of the benefits we receive from indirect relationships is a supermarket.  Why do we go to the supermarket instead of establishing a relationship with an apple farmer a vegetable farmer a sugar plantation a wheat grower and so on?  The number of direct relationships necessary to fill a shopping cart with just the daily necessities would be amazing.

Favoring only one form of trade relationships is not fair.  With the plurality of the global village, it is silly to assume that only one type of relationship can exist between buyers and producers.  Choosing one relationship as the best favors people who fit the model of this one relationship and discounts any relationship that may try to differ.  There are many external events that can favor one side of this relationship over the other, including weather conditions, trends and inflation.  I am concerned that people in the ‘fair trade’ movement don’t think that buyers and producers are intelligent enough to make these decisions on their own.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #2

2. Forced labor and exploitative child labor are not allowed

Neither are they respectable on a worldwide scale.  No country’s people or system of trade advocates for these conditions.  Unfortunately, these conditions exist and we can’t just wave a magic wand and make them go away.

Simply not allowing something is a very poor way to go about dealing with a problem.  It immediately rejects any small steps that may improve the situation from where it currently is but not solve it completely.  It is also unreasonable to assume that these conditions can be reached without passing through many of these small steps.

For example, let’s take a family in poverty that has barely enough resources to evade starvation and no access to daycare or clean water.  What is more exploitative, the situation where the children in the family work and help the family continue to survive or the regulation that says that they are not allowed to do this?  Of course, the current ‘fair trade’ movement does not advocate blocking these families’ only means to survival, but it doesn’t take a very close look at the feasible available alternatives.

Some people say high-income countries should send money to the low-income countries, though the problem doesn’t end there.  Money isn’t everything.  These people also have to learn how to sustain a lifestyle outside of poverty.  Many of the countries where this is a problem don’t even have institutions or governments that can offer a sustainable environment, free from special interests and war.  A discussion about the best way to solve these problems has been tied up in bureaucracy for years and no agreements have been reached.  While this debate continues, we need to ask again, what is more exploitative, the situation where the children in the family work and help the family continue to survive or the regulation that says that they are not allowed to do this?

I do not wish for unnecessary child labor, nor do I think a mother who is living in poverty would put their child to work if it were not necessary, but by denying poor families from opportunities they have we are not trying to solve problems that exist, but problems that we would like to exist.  Denying opportunities to families in poverty and their children, even if they are marginal and not up to our own society’s standards, is not fair.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #1

1. Producers receive a fair price - a living wage. For commodities, farmers receive a stable, minimum price.

I am concerned that this principle assumes the buyer does not deserve a fair price - a living purchase.  A voluntary trade involves two parties, the producer and the buyer.  Both share in the transaction because they think they will be better off after it takes place.  They both agree on a living price.

Let’s take the example of a coffee farmer.  If a buyer spends less on the goods provided by one farmer, they the buyer has more to spend on the goods of another farmer or on another industry, such as purchasing a mobile phone or clothing.  These other industries also employ low-wage workers in semiconductor and textile manufacturing.  The choice to support one producer would be the choice to favor that producer over others in the same position.

Also, this argument doesn’t acknowledge that people are unique and may value commodities differently.  Where some people might love the latest fads and trendy music and be willing to pay a ton of money to have these items, others consider these items to be trite and unnecessary and wouldn’t spend a dime on them.  The same is true for coffee and other products.

Consider if the price of $100/lb was decided upon as a ‘fair price’ for coffee.  Clearly, a coffee farmer whose beans were once enjoyed by low-income buyers would no longer be able to sell his coffee to these people.  Now, $100/lb is an exaggeration, the real fair ‘fair trade’ price may just be $1 dollar or $2 dollars more than the initial price.  But the same principles hold.  Some low-income buyers will no longer be able to purchase this type of coffee because it will move out of their price range and others will have less money to spend on the goods of other producer’s who might be in a similar low-wage position.

Thus, by the standards set in this first principle, ‘fair trade’ favors certain producers at the cost of others and favors producers over buyers.  This is not fair, nor does it leave fairness to be decided by merit but by favor and privilege.

How to Improve Fair Trade: #0

Trade should be fair.  And as an advocate for fair trade amongst nations and people I must express concern about the current premises in the ‘fair trade’ movement.  The arguments in support of ‘fair trade’ are specious, favor special interests and hurt small businesses and low-income buyers.  On top of this, human nature is perceived to respond differently to incentives based on whether the person is acting as a buyer, producer or a worker.  These arguments must be reanalyzed because, in their current state, they are nothing but a mockery to fairness.

Over the coming week, I will take the 8 principles that Global Exchange lists to be the pillars of “fair trade” and raise some concerns on why I think they are inadequate in framing the discussion about fair trade.

Corrections

It turns out I wasnt entirely robbed.  Just the chocolate.  And my favorite big bench is gone as well.  These last two facts are the hardest to take.  I had a photo shoot planned for this wonderful bench.

Also, I might point out that my diffuse labeling of ”those grey double-holed bricks” was not an attempt to be poetic.  I have since been informed that these items are known to most English speakers as ‘cinder blocks.’   (Thank you for the correction.)  May the image be a bit clearer for everyone now.

Tropical House Plan: Tree Orchids

Are there any flowers that we can tie to trees in California?  At the university where I spend my time here in Guatemala, there are orchids tied to half of the trees.  Unfortunately, it is not the season to see them in bloom but the potential of their quantity and the way they are tied to the trees with twine is very attractive in itself.

Living Large Though Short on Rent

My keychain now reads “Christo Vive!,” a careless pastel sunset and the silhouette of a couple of sailboats and seabirds seasoning the cutout of the letters.  It was more by a matter of chance that these keys come upon me, the visiting professor who inhabited this flat before me being called home, and the convenient month window of my stay slipping nicely in before the visiting professor of the year to come arrives.

Along with the artistries of a prehistoric skateboard and a multiple broad-ended canoes, I enjoy a spacious two-bedroom, two-bath, two-balcony house with a study and spacious, interconnected kitchen, dining room and living room.

All within a five-minute drive from the University, a five-minute walk from a very nice bakery, and a five-minute strut from what is called the ‘zona viva’ which is conveniently placed just out of ears distance from my ajar windows.

I was even provided a mobile phone and four large vases of colorful flowers upon arrival and I probably began to take this all for granted as when I returned home this past evening to find I had been something akin to robbed.  The flowers I had signed off the day before, though the living room table, a chocolate bar and my laundry basket have now also vanished.

I wont miss the living room table, as the kitchen table along with its behemoth of a bench has been my social home, although the chocolate bar (macadamia nut) and the laundry basket will be missed.

All of the information that can be derived from my forensic apartment-dweller wisdom is that the phantom of the apartment is smart (there were three other chocolate flavors to choose from and they chose macadamia) and kind hearted (having removed my dirty clothes from the laundry basket before making off with it) aside from their kleptomania.

Possible Moral: there are costs to complementary rent; stationary furnishings and chocolate are commensurate with the proper monthly dues.

Carlos Alberto Montaner

This past week, we have enjoyed the visit of Carlos Alberto Montaner, a well-known Cuban writer, here in Guayaquil.

His prosaic words have taken us between the heights of the Bankers Club, the Oro Verde and the Hilton Colon, and lead me to enjoy some of the best meals to be found in these parts.

His book, Liberty and it’s Enemies, will accompany me on my trip north.

Productivity Live

Double Sided Photocopies:  Nope.  What requires three button presses in the US required 3 stores and a day and a half wait down here.

Plane Ticket:  I went to the travel agency and purchased a ticket.  Well, not exactly, I needed to pick it up the following day.  I learned this after sitting in the travel agents office for an hour while she called 5 people for various reasons and then we had to walk down to the main street to use a better photocopy machine than the one in the office.  Then, she had to call and make sure I live where I told her I was living and confirm that the eTicket (I don’t know if this is the best way to have a ticket down here as maybe you too have realized the travelocity-like fluency to this transaction) can be sent to her, but she couldn’t do that until the people at that office got back from lunch.  It was 3:00.

I returned the following day to pick up the ticket.  This lasted about a half-hour while she finished a phone call, gave me a print out of all the information I needed, and then insisted that I wait until another, very similar, paper be printed out.  She did not have this paper.  She tried again calling those people that were probably still out to lunch although, even though they said they would send it right over, nothing arrived for twenty minutes and then I was assured that what I have was good enough to get on the plane.

Yellow Fever Vaccination:  On reaching the vaccination center at 9:00 in the morning the whole staff had left to vaccinate some boat.  A nice man in the street was kind enough to ask me if I actually needed the vaccination or just the certificate.  I guess, depending on your situation, this could be a more productive or less productive an option.

I returned the following week for a more successful experience, you simply pay somewhere up on the third floor, they fill out two papers saying that you have paid, then you walk back down to the ground floor, go outside, and walk halfway around the building.  The room at the end of this trek is where you get vaccinated.  They fill out two more papers to say you have been vaccinated.

Insulation and Dreams

The 3am speedsters, the motorcycles, the bottle guy (botellas, not albondigas), the neighbors doorbell, the incessant honks at the neighboring intersection…; they’re all right in my living room.  I can’t even be sure they are outside until I get up and check to see the front door isnt wide open.

I have received several semi-tours of the city.  Guayaquil is a port city with several salt-water estuaries that meander their way through the city and it’s outskirts.  The main waterfront is known as the Malecon 2000 and stretches from the Hot Wok restaurant franchises of my co-worker until Las Penas, a wonderfully attractive hill with four hundred and some steps (yeah, intelligently, theyre numbered but of course I forgot to pay attention in the final moments of the ascent) which culminate in leading you to a petite church and a pirate ship.

On the outskirts of the city there are a series of private housing projects, very American in nature if you ask me (large tracks of land and similar houses, great for bringing down costs with economies of scale I suppose), and all walled in with their own social sundries.  The houses here, unsurprisingly (due to the heat), yet surprising to me (due to my shallow ethnocentric architectural expectations), have no insulation.  They are built with brickՑbut not red brick, those grey double-holed bricksand this brick is covered with something that looks more aesthetic, such as inners and outers of walls.

Of course, the house where I live also has this fascinatingly empty structure.  You cannot knock on the wall and determine anything about studs; the entire wall is simply hard.  The most cultural sounds that make their way to my living room must be the intersection honking.  That is, here in Guayaquil, as you near an intersection, you honk.  If you are going faster, you honk more times.  Itѕs probably proportional but I havent done any calculations.  It is a form of communication.  The honk supposedly says, “Watch out!  Coming through.”  Though, falling under the similar phenomenon of the grandfather clock in the living room, after enough honks, they somehow gain the special power of invisibility and near uselessness, save for their perpetual barrage of the unsuspecting traveler.