Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

Free trade is the problem. Fair trade is the solution. Currently world trade is dominated by the ideology of economic globalization -- the creation of a single global economy with universal rules set by big businesses for big businesses in which a seamless global consumer market operates on free-market principles, unfettered by domestic or international laws or standards. [...] And it is creating deep and entrenched inequalities in its wake.

The combined sales income of the world's top 200 transnational corporations amount to almost twice the annual income of the bottom four-fifths of humanity. Eighty countries have lower per-capita incomes today than they did a decade or more ago and 200 million more people this year are living in absolute poverty (on less than $1 a day). The world's 225 richest individuals have a combined income equal to the annual income of half of humanity. The world's three richest men -- Bill Gates and his two partners in Microsoft -- have a combined annual income greater than the combined income of the 48 least developed countries!

— Laure Waridel, Coffee with Pleasure: Just Java and World Trade

My latest hair-brained scheme is to look in to starting a fair trade coffee co-op in Haiti. Anyone know anything about fair trade? Contacts? Resources?

Comments

[seajay06.livejournal.com]

"The worlds 225 richest individuals have a combined income equal to the annual income of half of humanity."

!!!! Profoundly disturbing.

I don't have any personal contacts/resources, but Alterra Coffee is a local company that roasts wonderful fair trade coffee. http://alterracoffee.com/