You can buy bananas at the grocery store for .79/lb or you can buy "fair trade" bananas for .89/lb. The more expensive ones claim that they support fair wages and fair prices in developing countries. I suppose that means that Loblaws does not pay fair prices for the rest of their bananas eh? Besides, how can I possibly believe this stuff? By the way, the expensive bananas are packaged in sealed plastic bags because they need a way to distinguish them. Who pays for that I wonder? The farmer in Costa Rica? I'm sorry, I know I'm a cynic but I just can't buy what they're selling. I would be very suspicious that the extra 10 cents goes to pay whatever bribes need to be paid to get their product the fair trade certification, and that the farmer in Costa Rica gets absolutely nothing more than he ever gets. I would bet on it! I bought the cheaper bananas.
AnywayI guess the real question that the banana situation begs is what is "fair"? Who decides? I can easily justify how life has been unfair to me....at least if I don't think about the man I SAW with the bag attached to his belly. I wonder what he considers fair? Or the parent who has lost a child, or the person who has lost a limb, or the terminally ill, or the drug addict, or the orphan, or the victim of war, or the unjustly imprisoned, or my mother for that matter? What is fair?
Slow training day today. I finally ran out of steam at the pool and so spent maybe 15 minutes getting wet. I will not swim again until monday. Then I ran the block late this afternoon in what was perhaps the strongest wind I have ever battled. Much to my surprise my legs were still a little sore from Sunday. I must be getting old!
I wish to dedicate day 198 to the memory of my Uncle John Rooyakkers because he had the same quiet demeanour as my Dad, and was almost as good a farmer.
“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."---Oscar Wilde
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."---Groucho Marx
love
peter
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4 comments:
Aahhh - that's better.
And about what's fair? - talk to Akacia because she seems to know all the ins and outs of what's fair. If I understand it correctly, everything that puts her in the plus column is fair, and everything that means someone else is better off is not fair. So you see it was fair that you didn't pay as much for your bananas.
Love you
I'm with you on the fair question. The one that always gets me is the phrase 'you deserve it'. especially as used in advertising. How does anyone know who deserves what. Maybe i dislike it so much because I'm afraid that at some point I might actually get what I deserve. It's just not fair!
From what I've learned and heard in classes, fair trade can make quite a difference in the lives of farmers, who are able to produce more variety of products and have increased general standards of living. There have been a few studies done on this kind of thing to gauge the actual impact of fair trade.
you can never know with these these things. in the absence of proof that something is what it claims to be i like to weigh my options (as i see them.)
if something has the potential to make a huge difference in the standard of someone elses life and the impact on my life (or pocketbook) is so small that i won't even notice the difference - i like to think that the potential good that it could do someone else is worth the (tiny) risk to me.
if somewhere along the line someone takes me for 10 cents or even 10 dollars i still know that somewhere along the line i did someome some good.
i have been on the receiving end of some good deeds in my life that i will forever be grateful for. some from strangers who took me at my word and lent a hand. i like to give back when i have the opportunity.
we are truly privileged, all of us. we have all done without and struggled with money. but nothing in my life even compares to what some people have to go through to make ends meet.
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