This just in! A conversation I just overheard between business students in the concourse!
“What’s fair trade?”
“Oh, it’s a social policy, not an economic policy. I will now use as much jargon as possible to describe it so that you have no idea what I mean.”
“So…fair trade is, like, not buying diamonds from Sierra Leone?”
“No…it’s more like, you know how everyone in China is basically a slave? It’s like, not supporting that. And instead compensating marginalized producers. Like coffee. Fair trade coffee is when they pay the coffee workers so that they’re not slaves. So, like, money goes to the poor.”
“Oh, so that’s good then.”
“No it’s not. It’s bad for the economy. It just redistributes wealth and inflates things.”
“But, isn’t it good for local economies if workers are making more-”
“Yeah, but it’s bad for the global economy.”
“But, it’s better for poor people-”
“But it’s bad. For the economy.”
“But-”
“It’s bad.”
Dave and I kind of had that conversation with some people once upon a time, too. They didn’t like Fair Trade because of something stupid like it put money in the hands of poories. God damn poories.
I’ve been hanging out with Borrelli too much.