Ithaca College

I just wanted to thank Green Mountain for supporting the free market like this. They saw a demand for fair trade coffee and responded to it by increasing supply to match the demand. It always makes my heart happy to see good capitalist principles at work. That's what this is after all. Businesses care about profit, and if they can gain more by providing coffee at a higher price, they'll do it. There's still no morality behind it, just a consumer driven market, and the market always wins. When people get sick of paying inflated prices, they'll demand free trade coffee back. Capitalism can never be defeated. The living situations of these farmers hasn't been infinitely improved, they're temporarily better off until the market has its way again...and it will.

In fact sir, none of what you say is true. The prices aren't inflated in the manner you make them out to be. 2 more cents a cup doesn't come out of a need for profit but a want to give money back to the people who actually deserve it and do the work. If the farmer who is harvesting the beans can't actually survive on what they are being paid, there is a problem. Fair Trade stores and companies aren't making a profit. In fact, with fair trade, large businesses are cut out of the equation. Fair Trade Federation companies works directly with the producers to ensure better working conditions and donate most of the money back to the country itself to be used for social programs. Fair Trade stores didn't come about as profit making schemes and currently are operating as such. For example, Ten Thousand Villages was founded by Mennonites who went to South America and saw that people were not being paid anything for their goods. It now operates through volunteers and gives 50 % of the money back to the farming cooperatives immediately, while using the rest for the basic running of a store and donations. WalMart, for example is the largest corporation in the world and is owned by 5 of the 10 richest people in the world. Yet they don’t give a living wage to their employees or the people they buy the goods from. They can easily afford to, but they don’t. Fair Trade does give it back. Once again, the demand for fair trade coffee is NOT for profit. People are demanding this because they see an injustice, not just with coffee but how things are being made around the world. Instead of sweatshops, working conditions need to be raised to a higher standard. Currently the best way to change the way we operate with other countries. Globalization should not be a profit making enterprise at the expense of the poor. The best way to right this is to pay the people what they deserve. You can sit here at college with all of your benefits and say this, but try actually going to another country and seeing the effect it has on the people. It is ridiculous that you would suggest anything else but fair wages—unless you have a better plan to prevent starvation around the world.

Sorry I didnt read my last comment through very well before I posted it.

Fair wages are lunacy. I'm sorry, but some of the people at Wal-Mart don't perform a job that deserves being paid much over minimum wage. Considering the amount of carts I see all over the parking lots, not taken care of, some people aren't doing their job. They don't deserve to be paid for a job they're not doing. Besides that, fair wages would introduce more money into the hands of people and allow them to pay more for things. So businesses will charge more to compensate for the increased wages they need to pay out by increasing prices. They can also increase prices because people have more money, this is not a winning formula. Leave business alone and let the free market rule. And as for solving starvation, there's always genetically engineered food. There's no concrete data to prove it does any harm. Besides, even if it did cause cancer...I hear starvation is pretty painful to die from too and has a much higher mortality rate than eating genetically engineered food.

There is a difference between being paid what your work is and being paid a minimum living wage. If you'll notice, the minimum living wage is what people are fighting for.

When peoples' incomes increase in the communities we're trying to help, they will actually be able to live, first of all (before, they were producing at higher expenses than they were recieving a profit for, which meant they were losing money), and if they happen to make extra money to become consumers of non-necessities, they will not be paying more for them. They will be buying a greater variety of things. They will be sending their children to school. (By the way, fair trade cooperatives often help fund schools, health needs, etc-- which are fixed costs.) THEY WILL BE INCREASING THEIR STANDARD OF LIVING.


The free market is built by a lot of human effort. It is not something we just let go. We mold it. I mean, as you mentioned, businesses are now offering FT coffee because they see that's where sales are going.

By the way, do you realize that free trade, aka massive ag. subsidies to large companies, hurts American small farmers? It is not just others we want to look out for.

For all of those for whom getting Fair Trade here on campus (by degrees)
meant an extra step or effort, thank you, thank you. Next we can start
thinking about the seasonal fruit pickers; the small dairy farmers who are
being driven out of work by the agribusinesses, etc. But of course it will
be one step at a time. Your efforts are appreciated.