Once in a while, I come across a person who does not buy in to fair trade practices due to well thought out objections. Once in a while, said person is willing to engage in respectful conversation about those objections. Those conversations are initially difficult for me because I’m so passionate about fair trade that at times it feels personal. They are beneficial and necessary, though, because they cause me to think in ways I would not normally.
Some of the recent objections I’ve received are
- Fair trade is not that simple. Boycotting a product threatens jobs of those who work for the company you are avoiding.
- Fair trade is not that simple. What happens to the (albeit exploited) workers when their income dries up due to boycotting?
- Not all child labor is slavery.
However personal fair trade may feel, my goals do not include defending it. I will give my thoughts in the comments, but I’d love to hear your responses first. What do you think about these objections to fair trade?
Well, it’s not simple, is it? Most things aren’t. The world is a chaotic system, and even the best-intentioned actions can have negative consequences.
A job and some money is better than no job and no money. But a good job and good money is even better. I think that a system, regulations or whatever, that prevent people from having any kind of job without providing an alternative are bad. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to provide that positive alternative. To create more and more good jobs until no one needs the bad ones, and then the bad systems will die away on their own. I don’t know that we can ever fully succeed, but we can try.
Child labor is another one of those tricky things. Of course none of us likes to see the pictures of children toiling away in factories and compare them to our own fat happy children whose only job is to play all day. But the concept of childhood really is a pretty modern one. The lives of most children in history much more closely resembled those of the child laborers than those of most American children. Does that make it right? I don’t know. Setting aside the issue of actual slavery, it’s good, in a way, that the children can contribute to the family’s income. They just shouldn’t have to.
And that sort of life tends to be self-perpetuating; it’s hard for such children to grow up to have any better a life than the one they and their parents have, versus a child who has the opportunity for an education. But straight up banning children from working may not be the best answer. The two concepts are linked–if the parents have better jobs, the children don’t /need/ to work and can go to school instead.
It’s complicated. In some ways, some fair trade practices might in fact make life worse for some people. But you can’t use that as an excuse to treat people poorly. Just because that job is better than nothing doesn’t mean it should be the kind of job you offer, if you have a choice. You have to be smart about the way you try to improve the system (or help the people in the system improve the system); you have to try to minimize the negative consequences and maximize the positive ones. But you still have to try.
Oh, Katie, I appreciate you so much. You capture much of what is leaving me feeling SO frustrated right now…but yes, you/I/ WE still have to try. Agreed, agreed, agreed. Love and am so thankful for you.