--F. Scott Fitzgerald
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After all of the great comments and discussion on last week's post on Fair Trade products, I've got a few more questions I'd like to toss out to readers to get more of your thoughts. Tell me your opinions or views on any (or all!) of the following questions:
1) Quite a few readers said they buy Fair Trade to have some degree of certainty that their food isn't made/grown by slave or child labor (in product segments like chocolate for example). But what about the converse of this statement? Does this mean if you don't buy Fair Trade products, then your food is by definition made/grown by slaves or children?
2) And so, if only a tiny fraction of "regular" chocolate isn't unfair trade, what is the value in paying a big premium for Fair Trade?
3) How many people who buy Fair Trade products also buy Apple products? Is that hypocritical? Ironic? Or reasonable?
4) Do Fair Trade products help us to feel good about ourselves? How does an empowered consumer figure out how much extra to pay for this "product feature"?
5) Bonus question: How do we, as empowered consumers, know when a company is using our guilt against us?
Readers, share your thoughts!
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6 comments:
1) Quite a few readers said they buy Fair Trade to have some degree of certainty that their food isn't made/grown by slave or child labor. But what about the converse of this statement? Does this mean if you don't buy Fair Trade products, then your food is by definition made/grown by slaves or children?
Absolutely not! It's just that buying fair trade is the only way to be sure you aren't contributing to child labor and/or slavery.
2) And so, if only a tiny fraction of "regular" chocolate isn't unfair trade, what is the value in paying a big premium for Fair Trade?
Knowing for sure. It's a personal choice, I'm not going to judge people for not buying fair trade, but it's worth the extra dollar to me to be sure i am not contributing to inhumane working conditions
3) How many people who buy Fair Trade products also buy Apple products? Is that hypocritical? Ironic? Or reasonable?
Perfectly reasonable. I don't buy apple products because I don't like them, but if you apply a moral rule in one part of your life, it should show in other parts. For me, I try my best to buy american made or secondhand. Sometimes I slip up, but it's impossible to avoid sometimes. It's a side effect of a culture whose only concern is getting things cheaper.
4) Do Fair Trade products help us to feel good about ourselves? How does an empowered consumer figure out how much extra to pay for this "product feature"?
of course they make us feel good about ourselves, and our choices. As for how much extra, for me it works like this. I have so much extra each week budgeted for extras. Like chocolate, or a drink when I am hanging out with friends, or whatever. This amount doesn't change. I can buy less fair trade chocolate, or more non fair trade. It is more important to me to know that I am doing my best not to contribute to the things that keep me up at night, than to have a larger amount of chocolate.
5) Bonus question: How do we, as empowered consumers, know when a company is using our guilt against us?
Of course they're using our guilt to get us to pay more. That's what the advertising is. But it's only being taken advantage of, I think, if you aren't aware of the manipulation. If you are aware of it, you can make an educated decision regardless of their intent.
"Does this mean if you don't buy Fair Trade products, then your food is by definition made/grown by slaves or children? "
This is a false choice. And way more than a tiny fraction of regular chocolate is not fair trade. Hershey and Nestle both have said (basically) that they can't be bothered with those kind of issues because they buy too much chocolate. So yes, I buy fair trade (or Ghiradelli, which I feel comfortable doesn't source from the Ivory Coast) even though it means eating less chocolate, and even though it means no Hershey kisses.
As Louisa said, the FT certification lets me know for sure that I am not supporting child slavery with my purchase, and because that value is important to me, I buy FT as much as possible.
I don't buy Apple products, but you do bring up a good point. It would be great if you'd explore that further. Although I don't think the working conditions at Apple factories are quite on the same scale as kidnapping children and forcing them into slavery, and there is quite a bit of cultural and economic differences between Chinese tech factories and the US to muddy the waters.
FWIW, I tried to boycott Chinese products and found it near impossible, especially as a mother of young children. So, I do the best I can and make changes/boycott when and where I feel it is MOST effective.
This issue is fairly unique to CHOCOLATE. As far as I know, other fair trade goods do not have the slavery component.
What Louisa said. :-)
I personally have never bought an Apple product, but not because of their manufacturing contractors' dismal environmental record (all electronics manufacturers have crappy records on pollution, etc.) - I just don't like their closed system.
DH bought me an iPod years ago for a teaching tool, and I have to say it is great, but I doubt it is really that much greater than any modern mp3 player. I still buy all my actual music elsewhere. :-)
I think as long as I am an informed consumer - actually taking the trouble to read food labels, etc. - then a marketing approach can't be said to be used "against me."
Using my brain is MY responsibility.
1) No, of course not.
2) Because, as far as the market is concerned, every decisions is binary, which means there is no "-1" - there's "1" (a dollar is made) or "0" (a dollar is not made, which is not actually the same as a dollar being lost - you can't take away money from an entity during an economic transaction). So what you have to do is cast your "1"s in favor of the sorts of things you'd like to see float. The value in paying for Fair Trade, then, is that vote - it's the value of increasing the market gain, and therefore, by extension, hopefully the market share of FT goods.
3) It's not really fair to single out Apple like that. It's hard to buy a lot of things (clothing especially, but anything with ties to the minerals trade is generally going to have the same problems as, say, chocolate. Specifically: it's hypocritical if you expect that everything every person does is on exactly the same level as everything else, and therefore must be held to the same standards.
Personally, I think that doing something is always - always - better than doing nothing, and that worrying about consistency is only useful as a way to discourage people from doing things.
4) I don't think that that question can be answered unilaterally - sometimes it makes people feel good about themselves, sometimes it doesn't. Similarly, the value placed on that good feeling is probably going to depend on what it is that the person feels they are accomplishing, and therefore can really only be answered by that person. It's like any other paying-for-food based issue: there are places people feel it's important sink money into it, and places where people don't.
5) The same way we know when anyone else is taking advantage of our guilt to use it against us: when our response is no longer intellectual, but emotional. It's perhaps unavoidable to a certain extent, but on the other hand, if people can't identify when it's happening, I don't know that it's the kind of thing that can be taught.
guilt or not companies use what ever they can to get consumers to buy: fair trade, organic, all natural, whole grain, free range, etc.
I buy apple - without thinking, I like how they are not as easily infested with viruses, etc.
Fair trade has no impact on my feelings.
I eat Godiva Champagne Truffles, good, bad, or indifferent - free trade or not.
These are just great answers. I'm always impressed by the mental horsepower of readers here.
I think at this point I understand why Fair Trade is an attractive product segment to many readers. Despite this, I still see it as a type of aspirational good. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if, as Louisa and Chacha say, you are aware of the potential for manipulation and are confident you *aren't* being manipulated. The thing is, most consumers believe they are "above" being manipulated--an irony if there ever was one.
As for Apple products, I'll have to think about whether there's a post in there somewhere.
Februarymakeup, you are a reader after my own heart! "Vote with your feet and your wallet" is what I tell my readers here.
Finally, the point Februarymakeup makes about over-focusing on consistency is a brilliant one. Economic decisions are binary (buy or don't buy), but environmental or ethical decisions are usually incremental. Great, great point.
Thanks once again for an excellent discussion.
DK
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