Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

It was a dull yet tough day today. Volumes were at all time lows in equities, nothing was happening, and I dozed until about 3pm when one of the relationships that I trade made a big move with no news being screamed out of the Squawk Box. Anyway, my account is all in, and I hope that it will go the right way tomorrow. Either that or my sponsored cat is going hungry.

Tomorrow I have a live game at my pad in South London. A few of my brother's mates will be in attendance, and so will some of my buddies. I have no idea what the expected numbers are, but we should have enough for a full table, and if there are too many I'll just save my cash and play xbox. Juice might be joining us. He hasn't played with us in a live game for ages, and I look forward to seeing him do the Chav Troll up his, erm, I probably shouldn't put such crude terminology on a family blog. Oh well. I've digressed...

Moving onto something that's confused me a bit lately...

Fair Trade

I bought some bananas over the weekend. Being the conscientious consumer, I bought Fair Trade bananas. Or did I actually buy them because I didn't bother checking the price or label?

Anyway, there are a few contradictions regarding fair trade.

The basic idea behind fair trade is to give producers a "fair" price for their produce. However, what is a "fair" price? Supporters of fair trade will argue that a fair price should enable a farmer to live comfortably and have enough to invest in his family and local community.

However, what gives them the right to expect to be able to make a living from farming? Let's compare them to professionals fromm other industries. Seeing as this is a Poker blog, let's consider the life of a Poker pro. Poker pros play Poker to make money, and thus provide for themselves and their families. It could be argued, that their income comes from recreational players, who pay for the challenge and privelage of playing with a top professional by losing to them. However, if the unskilled recreational player gets lucky against the pro and wins, is it reasonable for the bankrupt pro to throw his prams out of the pram and demand a massive rake rebate from the casino in order to feed his hungry puppy? We've all read poker blogs, where the players blame their unskilled opponents for their losses. It's almost as if they feel they have a right to win every time they play. Even I do it from time to time. Every time I lose a cent to Juice I add it to the payback account that is going to wreak havoc on his bankroll at some point in the not too distant future.

Another problem with a lot of fair trade produce, is that seeing as it comes from distant third world countries, it needs transportation. This destroys the planet. And if the planet gets bashed too hard, everyone will suffer/die.

The final point that I'll mention (there are many more, but it's getting late), is that these fair trade producers must be operating terribly inefficient businesses, and should probably try a different career. Relying on charity to get a decent return on investment is just bad practise. What if the charities decide that a beneficiary has become wealthy enough, or the consumer decides that coffee just isn't fashionable anymore? And besides, why are charities encouraging people to pay more for goods, when Civitas has recently shown that a third of UK adults are living on state benefits? Surely charity begins at home? Why not argue for Fair Trade MacDonalds by doubling the minimum wage?

Labels: coffee, fair trade, macdonalds