Unions: Where did the U.S.A. go wrong?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Hmm. Roughly speaking ever company that makes shoes has seen such a scandal in the not to distant past. Child labour is still very much a fact of 3rd world life, and employing child labour is still very much a fact of multinational manufacturer CEO life.

Personally I doubt the Fair trade “movement” idea, is hogwash. It's aims are not for a global, cutthroat free-market capitalist environment. Its aims are to improve the working conditions of those who are decidedly in the lower half of this capitalist food-chain (if you will), and raising awareness in the top-half. Which isn't a bad set of goals in and of themselves; and the practices they employ have a highly free-market touch to them (setting up your own companies to compete with mainstream, raising awareness so people can vote with their dollar or euro or yen).

Anyway. Fair trade is not just about “forcing companies” to pay higher wages to local workers. It is also about setting up own corporations with the aim of increasing the wage of the participants. For farmers it is like a reverse-union (and not unlike what farmers did in the 19th/20th century over here) except without a USA or EU pumping in vast amounts of money to prop 'em up, or a Japan to ban all that they didn't make.