They need us, we dont need them

I never said supermarket profits were high. I said that the profit margins after paying some bean picker $0.30 a day is absolutely vast and at some point between the bean picker and the supermarket customer there is a con going on. I see a pomegranite in the shops yesterday £0.85 ($1.70) the people that picked that would get what? maybe £0.0001
and you see nothing wrong in keeping people in the third world in conditions of poverty just so you can stuff your fat ass full of food that rightly belongs to them?
for every 10,000 of theose pomegranites the capitalists get £8500 in that supply chain
but the picker gets £10 ha ha ha - Its you thats having a laugh - if them are your morals you keep em ! but theres a growing consensus that it just aint right.
Either youre in the business of feeding people or youre in the business of ripping them off - I prefer to be in the business of helping people - I just dont know how people justify that much of a ripoff when some capitalist shit is sitting in his cosy office ripping off both the shelf stacker - the picker and the owner of the crop by putting a board of directors in taking home salaries of over a million a piece some of them.
Nah - capitalism is a dinosaur - its really failed to take account of the fact that some people dont want luxury goods at the cost of the lives of those who produce them - the least them bastards could do is provide health care and income support for those people but instead they trash half the food the EU makes because its cheaper to exploit the 3rd world and then stuff their pockets full of loot made on the backs of starving kids- its not an economy thats ethical at all - you buy your tee shirts at tesco's for £20.00 - the twelve year old that made it gets £0.05

Like I said to gardener as well - it aint simply the fact that we can choose different goods - more ethically paid for - its not a different shopping scheme the left wing is aiming for now - you would have thought that in the 20 years people campaigned against unethical corporations and their profits these fat arsed capitalists would have acted more quickly but - there comes a point when you just have to say "fuck it - where did simple demonstrations get us - theyre not listening - what do you do? keep saying the same thing or change tactics? no its not a shopping scheme anymore where its ethical versus unethical trading - it has to be a new ethic where they are made to listen - target all the capitalist institutions at the same time - The G8, G7 - world bank etc etc - people thought companies like BP were really going to listen but all they did was spend more money on filling politicians pockets and ad campaigns to make themselves look greener and more ethical - whats the point in dialogue thats monologue
Its actions that count, not words

 

Right, so, I should stand up for those people who are getting ripped off. They're not being payed fairly for their work. Now, I could buy fair trade...that'd help...but, it's more expensive, so no doubt there's STILL a lot of money being skimmed of somewhere, so maybe I should instead fly over to the country where each part of my meal is produced and by the ingredients that way...or maybe just buy no food at all?

I mean, it's all very well saying all that you're saying, it sound very nice to say we should stand up against these people who're ripping us off...but you don't actually seem to say how, a nice feasable way this could be done. Bearing in mind 90% of the population like to take the easy way.

 

more money goes to the labourers in the field that way - its more ethical but still not enough. Its not the politics of fair trade thats being argued against but even that system leaves something to be desired. Do you see where this is going?

Doesnt it strike you that all globalisation means is exploitatation further afield. Its better to have fair trade where the pickers get £1 a day rather than £0.30 or even £0.10 in some crop industries - but still unless the whole of capitalism transforms itself it will have to be transformed. Its anticapitalism thats the root of it but riding on that is anti globalism -
capitalism = exploitation in the west - globalisation = capitalist exploitation of other countries by the west

how about if you just eat less and pay more - the proper price instead of taking part in theft of someonelses resources?-
somehow I dont think those pickers get 3 meals a day - do you?

Well if youre asking - how do we transform society - just get up and do it ! Use your imagination and actually do something to make the world better ! Thankfully some people are beginning to realise en-masse that we dont dont need to ask permission to change things and we cant leave it up to government either - so really you just have to think about what the hell YOUR lifestyle is doing to kill people THEY exploit. Your demand for cheap food, and exploitative measures to get it, is really the demand that someonelses kids starve so you can eat

but like I say - if capitalism was fairer the poor would get paid more and the rich would take less and the prices could stay the same.
The demand cannot be that you must live like a king at the expense of the beanpicker - but at the cost of the rich capitalist pigs that exploit both you and the beanpicker - get it ? we dont have to exploit the poor quite so much - if the fat capitalists just got less greedy and paid proper wages to the poor slaves in 3rd world countries and paid themselves less

Thankfully there are anticapitalists to ensure that capitalism doesnt get away with it completely unscathed

 

What about those who can't afford to do that? I can hardly afford to pay my rent, I scrape by each month for food, often spending weeks eating just bread and butter. Even so I admit I life a more comfortable life than most, but I can't afford to pay the extra amount.

I still don't understand (excuse me for being slow) what you mean when you say to 'just get up and do it'.
As you said they're hardly fair to the consumer either, though we're better off than many on the other end, while we pay large amounts we have a higher earning...though down here in the south-west earnings aren't great compared the English prices.
So if it's down to the greedy middle man...there aren't many ways to stop them being greedy. A greedy person isn't going to stop making as much money as they can unless something is in it for them. Ach, I don't know.

 

so basically youre saying "fuck the farmers in the third world, I need to eat overpriced food and I'm ok with that"? Basically these capitalists are theiving food off the 3rd world because they know that they could pay more for it if only they took less money. If the price in the shop has to be £1 for a kilo of oranges then why dont they give the farmers more money in the third world and cut their own fat profits. They dont have to put the prices up if they pay the farmers more money - they just have to cut their own profits.

As it stands - when you buy a jar of coffee for £5 those people harvesting the coffee beans got £0.0005 or even less for that jars worth of coffee - I cant see that either the consumer or the farmer gets a good deal - only the fat bastards who market it and transport it ! If they paid the farmers more and cut their own profit the price could remain the same but the 3rd world economy would not be exploited as much and people would be able to afford to feed their families in the 3rd world

Well you either want that exploitation or just dont care that its happening - but it sure isnt me exploiting those people - I care a great deal about it and want to stop capitalists thinking they have the right to cheat everyone of a decent life just to please a bank manager - someone somewhere is making a fat profit out of other peoples misery by being a greedy fat arsed capitalist. The way to stop it is to put and end to capitalism and to re-establish trading as an ethical co-operative enterprise rather than a competitive enterprise

 

And Wal-Mart is what exactly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wal-Mart#Overseas_labor_concerns

 

For the anarchist economic theory, see mutualism (economic theory).

 

just so you know how much the supermarkets make in Britain, spooner, and so you get your head around the fact of a £6 Billion sainsburys empire ($12 Billion)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainsburys

sainsburys purchased Shaws the second largest retail group in the USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaw%27s_Supermarkets

tesco's fat pig capitalists also have their snouts in the trough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco

as do asda which is owned by walmart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asda

Oh and dont take those figures too literally we all know that the tax loopholes and other fiscal loopholes only mean they have to show how much tax they eventually paid and not how much rebate and how much money they made that didnt have to be declared

BTW - thanks for the text on Walmart, Shane, I hadnt realised just how unethical that company is - so basically I wonder now about the ethics of ASDA, its British wing

 

Not exact? You are just making them up. Do you think we can't see that?

You seem mystified as to how a pomegranate gets from the field to the shop, and how there could be any costs involved. No wonder you find a vague utopian collectivist ideology so appealing.

You know what happens if you pay a banana picker 10x his current wage? Suddenly loads of people want to become banana pickers. Then you get too many bananas. Then the price plummets and you need huge subsidies to keep the system from collapsing. You can't just arbitrarily set prices.

The children of the people who picked bananas in South Korea 50 years ago are now building semiconductors and LCD televisions. Although it makes socialists very unhappy, capitalism does lead to rising living standards over time.

 

...capitalism does lead to…imperialism, oppression, starvation and wars…flip sides of the same coin! Your standards seem to value the acculumination of "stuff".

Standards that protect our environment and the health and wellbeing of all earths children apparently have little relative value in you book??? Or is that chapter missing from you capitalistic tome?

Or...am I missing something here?

We the people in our imperialistic zeal refuse to see that the Trail of Tears continues to this day to lay in the wake of our collective actions.

 

What ??? Are you having everyone on??? What kind of crap economic thinking is this??

There are already enough people picking the bananas trouble is that the bananas all get sold in Europe and the USA for over inflated prices and even after you take the cost of transport into account they sell for some 3000 times the buying price per kilo - why dont you look on the internet and educate yourself instead of just blabbing about stuff you have have little grasp of.

The people who pick those bananas live in near starvation conditions and it isnt just adults picking them its kids as young as 7 years old - so why dont the supermarkets spend some time and put some money back into the economies they exploit?
Perhaps they could build schools and pay for the staff and then make sure they only employ adults - should only cost a few hundred thousand a year
per school not much to ask is it? then because theyre not exploiting the kids no more - perhaps they could pay the adults double or treble so they can afford to feed their school kid so that the kid dont have to work -
Or do you really like knowing some kid in poverty picked your coffee and fruit for you ? yeah I bet - anything for cheap food - just so long as that fat ass of yours can get fatter at their expense eh?

 

Oh come on, you have no idea what you are talking about, it is obvious. You are just another make-it-up-as-you-go-along socialist.

I checked Chiquita's annual report. They are the largest producer of bananas in the world. Their sales margin - profits divided by sales - is 3.3%. That means for every dollar you spend on their products, they get an amazing 3.3 cents profit. Now you said they are selling things for "3,000 times" what they cost including transport, a statistic you completely fabricated. This wouldn't make you look half as bad if you hadn't talked shit about how I should "educate myself". I'm serious - its really obvious you are making shit up as you go along.

They are putting money in the economies - they invest money there and pay people.

Yes, why don't they just fix all the problems in the country they operating in, on top of paying all their costs and paying taxes there? Think about it.

Why don't they just triple everybody's wages? You know what, I think you should try running a business. You sound like you'd be brilliant.

That's clever. Except I'm not fat. The thing is, genius, these people don't make low wages because Chiquita pays low wages. They make low wages because they are low wage economies. If Chiquita leaves, it would only get worse. Mr. $5 a day banana picker pays everyone who does anything for him $5 a day too, and if he quit Chiquita he would get the same from some local employer. His wage is $5 a day because that's the going rate. There's no magic cure for that, only development, which is a slow process.

 

sentient...how do you live?

Just curious really, without going into all these arguments...I mean, you have all these ideals and thoughts about how we should treat these people...I'm just curious, after all, it seems you think we should follow in your footsteps?
So...I take it you produce all your own food? I take it you mined all the raw materials required for your PC, cut the trees down for the paper you use? I mean...how did you do all this? To become solely dependant on your own means, creating your own electricity, and manufacturing your materials and tools...I just want to know what you do...where all your ideals take you?