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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Ethical produce: the laborer is worthy of his pay
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
It's relatively free as compared to what? The only reason the free market has lifted the Chinese out of poverty, to the extent it has lifted the Chinese out of poverty, is because China's trading partners bought into free trade and China did not. Free trade is based on 19th century economic theory. Explaining the theory behind free trade in detail would be political suicide for any politician who did it.
The comparison is with the command economies of the Soviet era when a central plan failed miserably to provide for the people. Yes, iamchristianhearmeroar, it's not perfect, but it's a VAST improvement on the disasters that went before.
Let's try a little multiple choice question here:
Which economic system resulted in hundreds of millions of Chinese rising out of poverty? Was it
a) The Maoist collectivist model
or
b) An approximation of a free market, with separate actors acting competitively.
Stalin in the 1930s was able to find a vast supply of useful idiots to help him hoodwink the world about his hell because people desperately wanted to believe that there was an alternative to capitalism. Despite Stalin and Mao's clear demonstrations that there weren't, there are STILL useful idiots trotting off to Cuba and North Korea in significant numbers.
We all WANT to believe that Santa Claus is real. Most of us stop believing in him by the age of 10. Sadly a lot of left wingers transfer their allegiance to an equally fanciful set of beliefs.
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
So, a free market economy is anything but a government controlled economy? Great. Even if the United States completely returned to the American System, we would still have more of a free market economy than the Chinese. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
So, a free market economy is anything but a government controlled economy? Great. Even if the United States completely returned to the American System, we would still have more of a free market economy than the Chinese. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Clearly the degree to which a country has a free market is a location on a spectrum; even North Korea has some farmers' markets at times. What is core to the definition is the freedom for others to enter existing markets - be it for cars, computers or care homes - setting up in competition with the intention of providing the product or service in a way that gives the consumer a better deal and the new entrant a reasonable profit margin.
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
I have a hard time seeing how the Chinese are embracing the free market but those advocating fair trade are not. Sounds rather arbitrary to me. Anything I've ever heard called fair trade is closer to a free market system than what the Chinese are doing.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Ender's Shadow
Shipmate
# 2272
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
I have a hard time seeing how the Chinese are embracing the free market but those advocating fair trade are not. Sounds rather arbitrary to me. Anything I've ever heard called fair trade is closer to a free market system than what the Chinese are doing.
Fair trade - to the extent that it is a purely voluntary decision by the consumer to pay more for what they buy - is ultimately an act of charity and has no effect on the free market. Where it become something enforced by government edict, then problems start to emerge: in practice it will be used by those opposing legitimate economic change to try and protect their industries from their approaching, and inevitable death.
Actually there are issues where some degree of control is entirely justified: deforestation is one area which works for me. But the problem is that the costs of going down this route rapidly build up to the point where the economic growth of the poorer country is compromised, and therefore the poor stay poor. They are the group that is routinely ignored in these arguments because we fixate on the workers in the industries that are going to go.
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Test everything. Hold on to the good.
Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.
Posts: 5018 | From: Manchester, England | Registered: Feb 2002
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
ES, I'm quite at a loss to understand where you get this notion of Fair Trade by government edict.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
If you're a fan of the free market, doesn't a free market require that the buyer and seller both have full information about their transaction?
Absolutely. I'm all in favour of there being as much information available to consumers as possible. It's when people move beyond that to saying "it should be illegal to achieve low food prices through low wages" that I'm less enthusiastic.
Two follow-up questions.
First, is there any way to ensure that consumers who want it can get information about pay and working conditions for agricultural workers, when producers have strong incentives to hide it?
Well, you can make providing that information a legal requirement. Sure, some people will try to get round the law, but then there are people who try to get round every law.
And no, mandating such information is not excessive government control in my book. The producers are still perfectly free to operate under their chosen business model, they just have to tell us they're doing it so that those of us who care about such things can choose to give our business to producers whose methods we approve of.
quote:
Second, how low are you okay with agricultural wages going? Are you opposed to minimum wage generally, or just for agricultural workers?
In practice, the real question is "how high can agricultural wages (and therefore food prices) go before I'm unable to buy food for my family". Doubling the wages of agricultural workers is fine in principle, but if it leads to a doubling in the amount I have to pay at the checkout every week then I'll soon be in financial trouble. And if someone has to be in financial trouble then I'd rather it be them. Sorry.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
Let's try a little multiple choice question here:
Which economic system resulted in hundreds of millions of Chinese rising out of poverty? Was it
a) The Maoist collectivist model
or
b) An approximation of a free market, with separate actors acting competitively.
That's fine as long as you accept another multiple-choice question:
Which economic system led to higher economic wellbeing, health and happiness?
a.) Laissez-faire economic liberalism c.1790
or
b.) Clement Attlee-style welfare state socialism c.1950?
Ergo, socialism is great and free markets are bad.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
[QUOTE]]Fair trade - to the extent that it is a purely voluntary decision by the consumer to pay more for what they buy - is ultimately an act of charity and has no effect on the free market.
Not at all. it is the consumer making a moral* choice about his/her behaviour in the free market-as one would hope that s/he would make a moral choice about his/her behaviour in any other sphere of life. In the real world, market choices (by individuals, not by those algorithms that seem to have got us all into such a fix) are influenced, rightly or wrongly, by a wider range of factors that are dreamt of in the philosophy of the Chicago School. Fair trade is, now, one such factor.
*It might in fairness be more of a lifestyle choice for some - 'I'm the sort of person who buys fairtrade'- as 'I'm the sort of person who shops at Waitrose rather than Sainsbury, or Sainsbury rather than Tesco, etc'. But either way, it's still a market choice. As I say, in the real world rather few of our market decisions are solely the outcome of a 'rational' economic calculus.
[ 30. May 2012, 09:13: Message edited by: Albertus ]
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Indeed. AIUI the free market assumption is that people seek to 'maximise their utility', which is a pompous way of making the fairly anodyne point that people try to do whatever will bring them the most personal satisfaction.
So if I decide that giving all my possessions to the poor and living on a pole in the desert will bring me the greatest sense of fulfilment, and do so, I am considered to have 'maximised my utility', even though I haven't done anything that a CEO would consider economic sense.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
[QUOTE]]Fair trade - to the extent that it is a purely voluntary decision by the consumer to pay more for what they buy - is ultimately an act of charity and has no effect on the free market.
Not at all. it is the consumer making a moral* choice about his/her behaviour in the free market-as one would hope that s/he would make a moral choice about his/her behaviour in any other sphere of life.
Oh, fairtrade is absolutely a free market thing. It's people choosing to spend more on products that cost more, because they are happy with the reasons why those products cost more.
The effect it will have on the market will come if and when so many people are choosing to buy fairtrade products that other producers will have to become fairtrade in order to continue to shift their stock. But that's not a change to the principles of the free market itself - in fact, fairtrade is (for want of a better phrase) a free market solution to the problem of ethical sourcing.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Thank you for this, Marvin- you've expressed what I meant much more clearly than I have managed to.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Yes, and I agree with what Marvin said as well. Which is why I find Ender's Shadow's position rather mystifying.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
LOL, when I saw that Marvin had posted on this thread, I was already clicking to open it with knives sharpened to attack his libertarian views on capitalism. Then I read his post, and discovered that I completely agree with it.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Well, you can make providing that information a legal requirement. Sure, some people will try to get round the law, but then there are people who try to get round every law.
And no, mandating such information is not excessive government control in my book. The producers are still perfectly free to operate under their chosen business model, they just have to tell us they're doing it so that those of us who care about such things can choose to give our business to producers whose methods we approve of.
There are already a raft load of food labelling requirements, so adding ethical information doesn't seem a big additional burden (and, indeed, things like FairTrade and Organic labels already do that). Of course, there will be pressure to cut corners on labelling to maintain profits, and in some cases the labels may become effetively worthless. There are examples of both within current labeling requirements.
In Europe it's already a requirement to label food that may contain irradiated or genetically modified product. And, consumers can choose to avoid buying products that may contain such ingredients. Of course, both irradiated and GM ingredients are common on the wholesale market and manufacturers go to quite considerable trouble to source non-irradiated and non-GM supplies since in both cases consumer choice makes it practically impossible to sell something with a "may contain irradiated ingredients" label. Not being as diligent about sourcing ingredients is cheaper, and so very tempting for business looking at the bottom line, and may result in irradiated or GM ingredients getting into unlabeled products. Especially in the case of GM, the policies of some countries in not differentiating between conventional and GM products makes it effectively impossible for non-GM ingredients to be sourced. Which, of course, denies consumers choice and restricts the market so it's even less free than it would otherwise be.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
[QUOTE]]Fair trade - to the extent that it is a purely voluntary decision by the consumer to pay more for what they buy - is ultimately an act of charity and has no effect on the free market.
Not at all. it is the consumer making a moral* choice about his/her behaviour in the free market-as one would hope that s/he would make a moral choice about his/her behaviour in any other sphere of life. ...
I could save quite a bit of money by buying a stolen laptop or TV, for example. There's a reason why I don't, and it has nothing to do with charity. OliviaG
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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