Fair Feels Good

Fair Trade Fortnight fever has taken over the UK. The event launched on Sunday on the Southbank in London, with a fair trade themed fair, where organizers commended British consumers for leading the movement to tip the balance in favor of the millions of farmers and producers in developing countries.

A friend of mine who attended the launch party referred me to read an article on Reuters about fair trade and ethical gold jewelery. I was inspired to read words such as:

… ethical jewelery good as gold … a woman would not want to receive a gift that was tarnished by exploitation … “I wanted my fiancee to know that the gift was very special and did not put people through hardship” …

A quick google search lead me to a debate on a US-based website, The Consumerist.

I was stunned by some of the comments - laden with angry cynicism towards the Fair Trade movement and the world in general. Are American’s generally scammed to death, that they have a hard time accepting a good movement? Or do they just not give a damn?

The general mood captured is that although it is not possible to do everything to improve the imbalance between farmers and consumers, we can try to do something. However, this mood was punctuated by comments such as:

I don’t feel like I get any extra “value” for the money. Seems like a scam to me.

I really don’t care what happens in Africa or South America. If people want to act like savages there over these materials that’s their problem. Not mine.

How many clothes have you worn that were made in sweatshops? Should we all go naked?

I find this talk extremely narrow-minded and depressing. So I put the question out there: Do you think we, as American consumers, care enough to make a change?

Tags: blood diamonds, farmer, gold, money, scam

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Fair Trade. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.