Quote:
Originally Posted by gray67
THANK YOU. Fair trade or organic coffee is just a way to identify yourself to coffee shops as being price insensitive. There is an excellent chapter on the economics of fair trade coffee in the book "The Underground Economist". I recommend people read it before saying how wonderful fair trade is.
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Don't bother bringing economic reality into this thread. Fair trade supporters don't care. They either: 1) Obstinately deny all arguments and simply insist that it makes the farmers better off (fair trade drinkers have a notoriously poor education in economics), or 2) Don't care about the consequences, because paying more for the coffee is right in principle.
You're spoiling everyone's parade, because they want to believe that they can do something as simple as paying a little more for coffee to fix problems that are complicated. Of course, the demand for fair trade is highly correlated with the demand for organic, which is unambiguously worse for coffee growers who must outlay thousands of dollars to get certified.