Victor Claar is the kind of guy that gets up at the crack of dawn each day, eats a bloody steak for breakfast and washes it down with eight raw eggs. After that he goes for a barefoot morning run over jagged stones and hot coals, wrestles a saber tooth tiger and then goes to meet Mike Tyson for brunch where he fearlessly gives him boxing pointers. At least, that’s the equivalent of what he’s doing in the world of economics. To put it simply, you can think of him as Chuck Norris in a suit.
So when Victor Claar raises an eyebrow over the economic and moral problems underlying the fair trade coffee movement that he believes are holding impoverished coffee farmers in a poverty cycle –his words are to be noted.
This article gives you an insight into the fair trade movement from an economic perspective. In other words, this is your chance to step into Victor’s shoes for a moment to see what is making this manly man’s blood boil when he sees how powerless our best model of fairness is in ending poverty. So grab yourself a double espresso with a shot of tequila just the way Victor likes it –things are about to get real.
Link: http://blog.acton.org/archives/57082-is-fair-trade-coffee-curing-poverty.html
