Debating Fair Trade

I have become deeply concerned with the economic orthodoxy developing in the Christian sub-culture in North America regarding so-called fair-trade. My own denomination - the Christian Reformed Church of North America - has recently published an issue of Justice Seekers on the importance of buying fair trade.

But this is pop culture international political economy, and nothing I've read and understand of economics seems to confirm this enthusiasm. What it confirms is an uncritical embrace of Wendell Berry's idyllic mode of production. Fair trade fits with the popular imagination of Africa needing essentially small-scale "mom and pop" stores, which fetch fair prices rather than being driven out of business by the conglomerate chains, like we all witness far too often here in North America.

The problem with this nostalgia is that it does not actually generate wealth. If it did, "mom and pop" stores wouldn't have gone out of business. Artificially floating unprofitable systems of production is as good a way as any to ensure that Africa (and other regions) stay poor; it ensures that single-industry economies continue to linger on, artificially stimulated by the latent guilt of the global north, when such economies could be differentiating, producing and even competing with the global North. What keeps this dream from happening is not paying higher prices for your coffee, but a profoundly broken system of international trade and global financial institutions.

I embrace Fair Trade as essentially a glorified public-relations campaign. It alerts us depth of our economic and political problems, but solve global economic disparity? Nonsense. The reverse is more true. We do need fairer trade - something tied, I believe, to freer trade. And, as both Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Collier agree, the problem with free trade is that it's never been tried.

* Further reading: I recommend here Collier's much lauded book The Bottom Billion, or his TED talk.

Amazing Grace (with Garlic)

I've been reading a lot of high literary theory as well as systematic theology and philosophy recently and in tackling the grand, abstract questions I sometimes forget the blessings of embodiment. This could be due to the fact that unlike others of you out there with lean abs, a love of physical activity, and metabolism to burn, I bear the burden of being portly, born with a loathing of physical activity that seems unable to be exorcised even with much fasting and prayer (okay, the fasting part is a lie). And yet, today I was able to take a moment to reflect on the embodied life God has given me and how good that can truly be.

I didn't make the chicken stew from scratch but I did authentically defrost it in the microwave and put it to boil on the stove. And before she left for work, my wife pulled out a recipe of drop dumplings from her favourite cookbook, Food That Really Smecks! I should have known or felt that some divine encounter was going to take place because such things happen when making, eating or even thinking about dumplings. While the stew was coming to a boil I mixed the cup of flour with 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and the same amount of salt, cut 2 tablespoons of margarine into the mix, added a teaspoon of parsley and several good shakes of oregano. I was about the add the half cup of milk when I felt called by the Spirit to grab the garlic powder and give it a few good shakes over the mixture.

By this time the stew was boiling so I put it down to simmer and dropped the dumplings into the pot, put the lid on for 15 min. and sat back on the couch. The busyness of my past week seemed to crash through the windows at that point and I found myself again swept away in a tide of "lofty" concerns.

Then the timer went.

I grabbed a bowl and scooped myself up a good portion of chicken stew and parsley-garlic dumplings and went back out the couch to look out over the cityscape out our third story window. The smell of the stew would have been enough to tempt me to break my fast (that is, if I ever actually had the self-discipline to fast in the first place).

I held up the bowl in front of the window and watched the steam curl in on itself and dissipate even as I tuned into the words of the song I had playing on the CD player, "Amazing Grace, I feel you coming up slowly now, like the sun is rising, heat on my face...".

And I was truly thankful for my meal, even the bit that I dumped down the front of my shirt. Thankful in a way I haven't been for a long time. The words "amazing grace" have many connotations for me and many memories associated with the singing of those words but now I have a smell to go with them... garlic.

God of all Creation, thank you for garlic, and dumplings, and re-heated chicken stew! Amen.

[NOTE: To my Reformed friends, cooking with garlic won't turn you into a Pentecostal... think of it as, say, Creational].

Gross, gag-worthy, healthy

Following up on my "On shit" and "On shit II" posts, here is another unsexy, gross, but seemingly very effective thing that would help those in need.

I will file this under unsexy=effective.

Can anyone point me to any data which would belie these predictions? Article from which the graph is sourced is here.

I've become convinced that people in our age bracket are going to have to work very, very, hard to pay for their parents. Not only by doing the right and familial thing of caring for them when they become old and gray, but also by paying for the government debt incurred when they made up the bulk of the voting population.

A prediction to debate: we'll see tax increases in the next five years.