Free Trade v. Fair Trade

[askDNA]

Which movement do you prefer?

Discuss.

[I'mOnlyHalfPolish]

free trade with certain aspects of "protectionism"

[Mr.K]

So far i have yet to experience that "free trade", fedex charged me ridiculous ammounts ( 30-40%) for whatever i ordered from the US. I don't think there's fair trade either. Fair sounds better though.

[Limeyfellow]

Free trade unfortantly has become away for people to get cheap goods into the country to make money by oppressing another people for corporate profits. You need an element of fair trading in and a way to end sweatshops and work houses that are ignored as long as you can get a sweater with a crappy label on made extremely cheaply to up profit margins. It just seems that freetrade has been taken over by the unscruptlous and greedy gits.

[Mr.K]

Free trade unfortantly has become away for people to get cheap goods into the country to make money by oppressing another people for corporate profits. You need an element of fair trading in and a way to end sweatshops and work houses that are ignored as long as you can get a sweater with a crappy label on made extremely cheaply to up profit margins. It just seems that freetrade has been taken over by the unscruptlous and greedy gits.
Yeah but if the sweatshops will be somehow outlawed and will disappear nike will try to sell their 50$ shirt for 100$ due to greed and need of profits. Perhaps American Appareil in an example of a sweatshop-free sucess, but even then i've read that the Owner is a big perv, he also exploits people and so on.

[annihilation]

Free trade in my book lacks certain controls that are required to prevent people from abusing and exploiting other people and the enviroment. Sure western nations export jobs to lower paying nations and in return those western nations get even cheaper goods and cheaper quality. But I never see get exported is fair worker laws, preventing children from working in factories, worker safety and a fair 8 hour day. I also don't see enviromental laws get exported / globalized either. So a nation (ex USA) wont allow enviromentally a certain factory to come but it makes it ok to move that factory to the far east (with less regulation) to produce the product to sell to america.

I might have not given the best examples, but I hope people understand what I mean. Im for globalization, but I'd like it to be more fair for everyone invovled.

[perdurabo]

full free trade market is fair trade market but in botrh ways politics allways twist it so badly that in free we are opressed by corporations and in fair we are restricted by goverment so f* both i vote for libertarianism

[annihilation]

full free trade market is fair trade market but in botrh ways politics allways twist it so badly that in free we are opressed by corporations and in fair we are restricted by goverment so f* both i vote for libertarianism

haha good point!

[XShipRider]

Yeah but if the sweatshops will be somehow outlawed and will disappear nike will try to sell their 50$ shirt for 100$ due to greed and need of profits. Perhaps American Appareil in an example of a sweatshop-free sucess, but even then i've read that the Owner is a big perv, he also exploits people and so on.

Nike sucks. They pay athletes hundreds of millions a year to promote their
products but exploit literally dirt-cheap labor to produce it.

No doubt my New Balance shoes are produced the same way. I'm a
hypocrite, I guess.

[Audio]

Nike sucks. They pay athletes hundreds of millions a year to promote their
products but exploit literally dirt-cheap labor to produce it.




Summary of Abusive Factory Conditions:
18-to-20.5-hour all-night shifts;
Mandatory seven-day workweek;
At the extreme, workers could be at at the factory up to 130 hours a week;
One day off every other month—just 15 days off per year, including national holidays. (Workers are denied half of their national holidays.);
Paid below minimum wage: For over 100 hours of work, the workers receive a net wage of just $16.75, averaging about 16.5 cents an hour;
Overtime is also illegally paid at just 22 cents an hour;
Wages are routinely paid late. When the workers protested in January 2004 to demand payment of their wages, management responded by firing 50 workers and withholding one month’s back wages;
Workers are not permitted to resign from the factory, but rather must apply for a “voluntary automatic leave,” which means they forfeit one-and-a-half months’ wages;
There is no legal work contract;
No Social Security or health insurance;
Twenty workers share one dorm room;
Organizing a union is strictly prohibited;
So-called corporate audits are announced 20 days in advance—and the workers are threatened, coached and bribed to lie if they are questioned. Workers are given a “cheat sheet” and paid 50 rmb—several days’ wages—to memorize the “correct” answers.




Take Home Wage at Foreway
Including 31 hours of mandatory overtime
Well below minimum wage
600 rmb per month for a seven-day, 101-hour work week
16 ½ cents an hour
$2.39 a day (approximately 15-hour shift)
$16.74 a week (over 100 hours)
$72.55 a month
$870.62 a year

http://www.nlcnet.org/campaigns/he-yi/he-yi.shtml

Sucks really to be Chinese....

[Mr.K]

Nike sucks. They pay athletes hundreds of millions a year to promote their
products but exploit literally dirt-cheap labor to produce it.

No doubt my New Balance shoes are produced the same way. I'm a
hypocrite, I guess.
I know,i have new balances too, can't beat the comfort but no clues about how they were made.

[Rune_X2]

There is no such things as "fair trade". It is based on a false notion that resources or commodities have an objective fixed value – however everything is worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them and nothing else. In addition, and like most third world aid, so-called "fair trade" initiatives are actually worse that useless, as they only strive to keep the workers in the third world in a constant subordinate state dependent on aid from their first world contributers, where the workers instead should be concentrating on producing other products or raise other crops, etc. It's like giving money to beggars - it just produce more beggars. It's useless for us and it's harmful for them – but as always there's a number of middlemen who do very well by it; professional western individuals who has made it their lucrative way of life to live off back of western do-good naiveties and third world miseries.


Free trade, of course, is good for us all.

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

Neither insofar manufacturing goes.

A country should be self sufficient in all goods the people need.

[Bert]

Free trade IS fair trade; what is currently called 'free trade' is BS protectionism, exploitation and elitist blocs, far from any form of free market.