Like many people my age, I am a regular consumer of Starbucks coffee. The combination of pretentiously named beverages and high prices is incredibly convenient. There’s also an added bonus: Starbucks coffee is produced from “ethical sources” (as defined by Starbucks).
This, along with Starbucks’ support of organizations such as Fair Trade, means one is being a moral consumer by supporting this company. In general, spending money on a product you desire and the good feeling of contributing to a cause is a win-win scenario.
At least, it’s advertised as such.
The problem with this concept of consumer charity is it’s an incredibly superficial attempt by international corporations such as Starbucks to market themselves to a slightly more conscious first-world public as caring.
By creating this situation, companies are able to exploit the sympathies of a supposedly caring American public. Giving money to corporations such as Starbucks is by no means charitable, or at least only in a very limited sense. In many situations these large institutions are in fact contributors to third-world poverty — they have a tendency to crush small businesses and form favorable deals to create monopolies in poorer countries. To buy into their advertising that they can be ethical and be a net good for charity is to fall into a trap.
A few extra pennies for Fair Trade-associated coffee farmers in Ethiopia is not a good long-term solution — the workers are still poor. Just because they are slightly better off through Starbucks’ association with Fair Trade or whatever other international organization doesn’t alter this fact.
The problem is the entire system of international corporations that have access to the entirety of third world labor. There are no real limits on what they are allowed to do, and merely because many of them have specific offers and deals that give away a small fraction of their wealth doesn’t mean they are actually helpful.
Even actual charities try to have similar deals, such as TOMS Shoes. The concept: Buy shoes, and they will ship a pair to a third world country. While TOMS shoes doesn’t do things like exploit sweatshop labor, the sentiment is still right-hearted, but wrong-headed. The people receiving these shoes are still poor. Perhaps their lives are a little bit better because they now have decent shoes, but when one is struggling to get food, decent footwear isn’t necessarily the best remedy.
The implication of the growing numbers of these sorts of charity offers and deals is that many consumers in the United States and other wealthy nations have internalized this “consumer charity” narrative. When people say they are acting morally by purchasing products from the same institutions that have often created poverty, it’s saddening, though perhaps unsurprising.
Due to the preponderance of private and corporate media with (obviously) heavily corporate slanted views and advertisements, it would be natural for most people to follow the company line. However, ignorance doesn’t really alter the action, and when blatant consumerism is treated as charitable then it’s just getting absurd. It reduces the role actual charity organizations have and increases the role of non-helpful organizations such as Starbucks. Real charity organizations, such as food banks and the American Red Cross, play a very real and useful role in general society and their local communities.
The problem is never those groups, the problem is when people are lazy enough — intellectually and physically — that they willingly decide not to give up their time and energy to help, and instead let possibly pernicious organizations pick up the slack.
Tom Bradtke is a senior history major. He can be reached at bradtke@umdbk.com.
