On Friday night i went to the DUS debate on fairtrade versus freetrade. An interesting debate especially as i am a fairtrade maniac as my friends will testify. The freetrade economists spoke only too predictably about how freetrade had lifted people out of poverty how it had 'made everyone richer' and 'given us more choice'. Obviously this man had been living in a sealed box buried 20ft underground for the last 30 years. Richer??More choice?? What a shamefully 1st world opinion. I wanted to shoot the man.
Still i guess he was right about one thing...fairtrade is idealistic. It is, because by nature we don't want to be fair. We don't want to be equal. That's why free and fair cannot co-exist, because people who are free do not choose to be equal! Either there is choice (freedom) or enforced equality (no freedom). It's a tricky one to weigh up. Life is by nature unfair, so why should we try and work against the system to make things fair when we know they never will be?
My brother, whom i have discussed this with many times, would point to socialism as the answer and suggest politics should move towards socialism. But alas i fear that this system relies on perfect, agreed justice and law. And if 'fair' is not achievable then how can justice be? So the situation we are left with is one where justice does not exist-a world where the innocent suffer and the guilty go free. So what's the point in this? Why should we consider trying to work towards these goals? I guess it depends on your reasons for doing so. If you do so just to achieve justice then all is lost, but instead if you decide how you are going to act regardless of the situations around you, then lack of justice towards you should not bother you, and you will already be doing everything possible to try and create a just world for others through your natural actions. I guess it all depends on your perspective.
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3 comments:
(Your time is wrong!) You are very pro-fairtrade. I don't think that we will ever have a perfect fair world...but surely it is good that we are trying to equal the balance a little?
How's Hgerfd??
It has to be observed that people will be much more willing to donate for someone they know than someone they don't. This isn't quite on the same debate, but more on the whole socialism point.
The fact is, that people always want lower taxes, but also good services. The subtext is that they want the services for themselves, but not for the tax they donate to go to others. This is not as notable here, where we have high taxes, but absurdly in the US, where they have low taxes.
Many Americans have a fit at the whole idea of giving a fraction of their money so someone else without a hope of getting any healthcare or the like can at least not be lumbered with a bill for three years just because they have a bad back.
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