Reblogged:Cheap Charity Unwittingly Does Right Thing

[Gus Van Horn blog]

A while back, when I was amusing myself with stories about office "coffee wars," I encountered the following doubly amusing anecdote:

I worked for a charity that focused on international development. We provided financial support to individuals and families while also providing vocational training and small business grants to help those we worked with become self-sufficient in the long run. Our advocacy work often centered on the appallingly low wages for work in many of the regions we supported.

Our CEO refused to buy fair trade coffee. They said it was too expensive. No matter the fact that the coffee we bought was made by exploiting workers we were supporting! I worked there for six years and this argument happened at least once every couple of months, whenever the office supply of coffee was running low. Someone would take up the mantle and try to argue that we should buy coffee that was ethically made and that paid workers a fair wage. No way, no how. [bold added]

In this age of widespread ignorance of economics and of what real poverty is like, it is very common for people in the West to clutch pearls at the very low wages (compared to ours) that nevertheless are a boon for the workers in poor parts of the world, and to accuse the companies paying them of "exploitation".

In fact, and as Yaron Brook eloquently argues during a Q&A (embedded below), these allegedly horrible jobs are not only a step up for the workers who take them, they are a necessary first step in the transition from poverty to affluence for these workers and their societies at large.

Two cheers for this "charity," whatever it is, for entertaining me with its admission that it sponsors a product for suckers, and for at least being enough of a steward of its funds to look for a bargain when buying coffee -- thereby accidentally doing more good than harm by contributing to the gainful employment of large numbers of workers by coffee conglomerates.

And yes, I am being serious.

-- CAV

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