AskProfWolff: What would be the implications of a global fair-trade agreement?

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I'm really liking these short segments. Thanks

TheWindGinProject
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Thank you for answering my question! I know my language was simplistic but I was trying to keep it short...of course in the current framework of capitalism "fair-trade" isn't really fair. But suppose a more ideal situation where nations cooperated to determine living wages and equitable benefits & conditions for workers. How would the resulting price increases influence economies at local, national and global scales? Would international trade become so expensive that it becomes irrelevant? Would the natural consequence be a return to regional and local economies? Or would the growing pains simply stabilize after a while to allow mass production and exports to continue?

theresauffner
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Lovely and informative video as always! Please consider buying a tripod for the next to come :)

hedbpb
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Well, there is a mechanism that can be called objectively fair: a clearing system. If there is a mechanism that makes sure that each country can only export as much as it imports, nobody could really complain.

markuspfeifer
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Fair trade means trading according to agreed upon negotiated rules. Will some lose because the competitors are better? Sure, there is no doubt about that, but this is very fair.Producing and selling stuff that others can make cheaper or better is plain stupid, and it reduces the wealth of your nation. It is better if the bad performer was forced into making something else.

Denmark had a long tradition for shipbuilding, but in the 1970's South East Asia had cheap labor and massive investments in new production methods. The Danes could continue to produce ships subsidized by taxing the rest of the nation, or they could close the ship yards and find new jobs in other sectors. Today most of the major cities have high priced private or financial centers on the old harbor areas, so Denmark clearly agreed it was better to accept defeat and move on.

What you say Wolff is that Denmark as the loser in this un-fair global competition have become a poorer nation. Can you please find data that supports this idea?

You fail to take into account that trade is not a zero sum game. Both the buyer and the seller can benefit from this deal. Short term some countries suffers a reduction by opening their markets. The shock to their financial abilities makes their products cheaper and in the long run this nation benefits because it gains access to a bigger market and the increased competition forces them to be innovative.

jh
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Would economic crises and falling rate of profit still apply in a worker coop dominated economy?

distortiontildeafness
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Right On Richard...It is mostly politics, but you can clearly see the difference between China and the USA on how they treat/view imports and exports

DavidisDawei
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I very strongly disagree with you here professor. It is nonsense that "fair" can have no intelligible meaning in context of trade - its coorporate nonsense which you should know better to than to teach.
The fair trade organisation/movement was/is an attempt to arrange FAIRER TRADE by people who want to arrange FAIRER TRADE. How do we judge that? We measure whether it improves the lives of the people at the hard end of the trade - and WORKER POVERTY is not an intangible matter !!.

Sure we would like a simpler less confounding world where single words can encapsulate the solution to our problems but thats not the universe we live in so we have to make sense of words like FAIR, and FAIRER, and believe others can make similar sense of them if we want to be FAIRER. And most of us can make sense - its coorporate and ideological rhetoric that tells people there is no such thing, no such deals can 'actually' exist (dont yall know) etc.

Fair trade products COST MORE because more money has to go to the impoverished. They can cost too much more because they have to compete with trade that gives ZERO attention to FAIRNESS. Of course they arent completely fair and final - its kind of branding, but its branding which promotes and promises the idea of being FAIRER.

If you would like fairer trade enough to argue about it - then support the explicit brand! And if the brand falls short, then argue its shortfallings not just this generic rhetoric "fairer is whatever anyone might argue it to be..." God its such Nestle lawyeristic word-warping that "fairer trade" is a philosophical impossibility, how the heck do you find yourself promoting it !

adymode
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thank you, Langley, for this clown. laughter is always good.

brandgardner