Jack MacRoary's Fairtrade Adventure
Episode Three
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: March 2nd – What does the Free Market cost?
Swearwords: None.
Description: March 2nd – What does the Free Market cost?
What I think the Free Market means is that the people with the power and the money have the freedom and the people who make and produce things pay the price. It’s part of a hierarchical system where those at the top have the cream and the rest of us are washing out the bottles. And that’s not right.
I thought I should Google Free Market to give you more of an idea what I’m talking about, but it’s every bit as confusing as trying to find a definition. Here are a couple.
“an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.”
And
“Free market” is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services.
I asked Dad which he thought was the best explanation and he said, ‘You pays your money and you takes your choice.’ And then laughed. He thought it was funny. It is quite funny really, but not when it affects people’s real lives. Which it does.
It’s all very well having this idea of no restrictions on prices, but it’s not that good for poor people. It’s not like you can say – you have no money so we’ll give you this for free – that’s not the kind of free it is at all. It’s the situation where nobody can step in and say ‘that’s not fair’ when someone is being paid too little or charged too much for something.
In our own country there are lots of examples. Dairy production is one. It’s not quite true that the exchange is ‘voluntary’ for a start. If my dad was a dairy farmer (which he isn’t) then he would want to get paid the price plus a bit to make it worth his while. But if the people buying the milk (and that’s not the ‘consumer’, that’s the processor and the wholesaler and the retailer – all of them ‘middle men’) say that there’s no ‘demand’ (which is stupid because clearly there is) or that ‘supply outstrips demand in the global market place’ (which is a way of saying there’s more milk being produced in the world than people are buying) then they tell the farmer he’ll have to sell at a loss or not sell at all. And then milk is bought and sold around the world and our milk might get shipped out to Germany and we might buy milk in from Romania – and this is the global marketplace. But all the dairy producers, all over the world are still getting a rough deal and the middle men are the only ones making the money.
So the consumer may get what they think is a ‘cheap’ price but it’s not really because it has consequences, which is that milk is being treated as a global commodity rather than as a necessity for putting in your tea and on your cereal, and one day we may not be able to afford to produce milk in our own country and all the dairy cows will be slaughtered and there will be no going back. Because the cows and the farmers and the milk are actually real, whereas the ‘global markets’ are not really real. Much less the ‘futures’ markets which is where lots of things the Free Marketeers think of as ‘commodities’ are bought and sold. Not for real, but on paper, probably not even on paper these days, just as digital things on a computer – and you’ll see we’re getting a long way away from a man getting up at 4 am every morning to milk his cows and sending his milk to the local shops and local people drinking that milk at 7 am with their breakfast.
My mum has an explanation for the Free Market Economy. ‘The world’s gone mad,’ she says. And she has a point.
Dad says that it’s more to do with ‘banditry’, by which he means the selfish people at the top who don’t care about real milk and real farmers and real cows, but about money – not even real money, just money on paper or on computers and ‘bottom lines’ and ‘assets’ and the like.
You might think, Brian did, that milk was a ‘liquid asset’. Mr Smith banged his head (his own head, not Brian’s) against the smartboard when Brian said that. But he has a point. It is a liquid and real milk can be an asset. But Mr Smith said that we just have no idea what the economy is and that we cannot ‘resist’ the Free Market Economy because it’s the bedrock of Global Capitalism. And he thinks that Global Capitalism is a great thing. I don’t. Because of Global Capitalism there are 60 people in the world who have more money than half the entire population of the world. That’s ridiculous.
Brian came up with a plan. He said that each of those 60 people should ‘adopt’ a continent and spend their money making life better for people there. I think that’s not such a bad idea really. It’s a better idea than the so called Free Market anyway.
You might think I’ve not even started talking about Fairtrade yet, but it was in our Economics class in August last year that my Fairtrade Adventure started, because a group of us stood up against Mr Smith and said we didn’t think the Free Market was a good thing, and he said, find something better then (in a rather sarcastic tone) and so we said we would – and we started finding out about Fairtrade.
We don’t actually have Fairtrade in this country - the reason for that is that the other countries are in so much a worse state that we have to help them first. But I think maybe we should play home and away at the same time and go for global Fairtrade – but that’s because I don’t have the patience to be what they call a gradualist. My mum says I’m like my Uncle Tam in that respect. If you don’t know, my Uncle Tam killed himself because of the Independence Referendum result, which you might think a bit extreme – it is a bit extreme – but it shows that he was committed to his cause.
And in case mum is reading, I’m not going to kill myself for Fairtrade, but I did commit to ‘walking the walk’ as well as ‘talking the talk’ when we decided to challenge the Free Market.
We started a Fairtrade group at DrumTumshie Academy. And secretly we called it the ‘Free Trade: TattyBogle fights back’ but we didn’t tell Mr Smith that.
Tomorrow I’m going to tell you about how we set it up and more about why I think there’s a lot of common ground between people in Scotland and across the world – farmers especially but not just farmers – and why I think we should give up on the Free Market way of doing things and push for Fairtrade as part of building a fairer world for everyone, not just for the ones at the top.
I thought I should Google Free Market to give you more of an idea what I’m talking about, but it’s every bit as confusing as trying to find a definition. Here are a couple.
“an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.”
And
“Free market” is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services.
I asked Dad which he thought was the best explanation and he said, ‘You pays your money and you takes your choice.’ And then laughed. He thought it was funny. It is quite funny really, but not when it affects people’s real lives. Which it does.
It’s all very well having this idea of no restrictions on prices, but it’s not that good for poor people. It’s not like you can say – you have no money so we’ll give you this for free – that’s not the kind of free it is at all. It’s the situation where nobody can step in and say ‘that’s not fair’ when someone is being paid too little or charged too much for something.
In our own country there are lots of examples. Dairy production is one. It’s not quite true that the exchange is ‘voluntary’ for a start. If my dad was a dairy farmer (which he isn’t) then he would want to get paid the price plus a bit to make it worth his while. But if the people buying the milk (and that’s not the ‘consumer’, that’s the processor and the wholesaler and the retailer – all of them ‘middle men’) say that there’s no ‘demand’ (which is stupid because clearly there is) or that ‘supply outstrips demand in the global market place’ (which is a way of saying there’s more milk being produced in the world than people are buying) then they tell the farmer he’ll have to sell at a loss or not sell at all. And then milk is bought and sold around the world and our milk might get shipped out to Germany and we might buy milk in from Romania – and this is the global marketplace. But all the dairy producers, all over the world are still getting a rough deal and the middle men are the only ones making the money.
So the consumer may get what they think is a ‘cheap’ price but it’s not really because it has consequences, which is that milk is being treated as a global commodity rather than as a necessity for putting in your tea and on your cereal, and one day we may not be able to afford to produce milk in our own country and all the dairy cows will be slaughtered and there will be no going back. Because the cows and the farmers and the milk are actually real, whereas the ‘global markets’ are not really real. Much less the ‘futures’ markets which is where lots of things the Free Marketeers think of as ‘commodities’ are bought and sold. Not for real, but on paper, probably not even on paper these days, just as digital things on a computer – and you’ll see we’re getting a long way away from a man getting up at 4 am every morning to milk his cows and sending his milk to the local shops and local people drinking that milk at 7 am with their breakfast.
My mum has an explanation for the Free Market Economy. ‘The world’s gone mad,’ she says. And she has a point.
Dad says that it’s more to do with ‘banditry’, by which he means the selfish people at the top who don’t care about real milk and real farmers and real cows, but about money – not even real money, just money on paper or on computers and ‘bottom lines’ and ‘assets’ and the like.
You might think, Brian did, that milk was a ‘liquid asset’. Mr Smith banged his head (his own head, not Brian’s) against the smartboard when Brian said that. But he has a point. It is a liquid and real milk can be an asset. But Mr Smith said that we just have no idea what the economy is and that we cannot ‘resist’ the Free Market Economy because it’s the bedrock of Global Capitalism. And he thinks that Global Capitalism is a great thing. I don’t. Because of Global Capitalism there are 60 people in the world who have more money than half the entire population of the world. That’s ridiculous.
Brian came up with a plan. He said that each of those 60 people should ‘adopt’ a continent and spend their money making life better for people there. I think that’s not such a bad idea really. It’s a better idea than the so called Free Market anyway.
You might think I’ve not even started talking about Fairtrade yet, but it was in our Economics class in August last year that my Fairtrade Adventure started, because a group of us stood up against Mr Smith and said we didn’t think the Free Market was a good thing, and he said, find something better then (in a rather sarcastic tone) and so we said we would – and we started finding out about Fairtrade.
We don’t actually have Fairtrade in this country - the reason for that is that the other countries are in so much a worse state that we have to help them first. But I think maybe we should play home and away at the same time and go for global Fairtrade – but that’s because I don’t have the patience to be what they call a gradualist. My mum says I’m like my Uncle Tam in that respect. If you don’t know, my Uncle Tam killed himself because of the Independence Referendum result, which you might think a bit extreme – it is a bit extreme – but it shows that he was committed to his cause.
And in case mum is reading, I’m not going to kill myself for Fairtrade, but I did commit to ‘walking the walk’ as well as ‘talking the talk’ when we decided to challenge the Free Market.
We started a Fairtrade group at DrumTumshie Academy. And secretly we called it the ‘Free Trade: TattyBogle fights back’ but we didn’t tell Mr Smith that.
Tomorrow I’m going to tell you about how we set it up and more about why I think there’s a lot of common ground between people in Scotland and across the world – farmers especially but not just farmers – and why I think we should give up on the Free Market way of doing things and push for Fairtrade as part of building a fairer world for everyone, not just for the ones at the top.
About the Author
Jack MacRoary, also known locally as the Bard of DrumTumshie, comes from the small farming community of TattyBogle, which he has singlehandedly put on the map through his fame. After bursting onto the Scottish literary cultural scene in August 2012, when he appeared at the inaugural Edinburgh eBook Festival, Jack now attends DrumTumshie Academy.
During his brief but eventful literary career so far, Jack has been a blogger, providing an insightful commentary on rural life and Scots culture; a short story writer; and most recently a political commentator through his McSerial contributions to the McStorytellers website.
The Complete TattyBogle, Jack's first “real book” published by McStorytellers in 2015, brings together in a handy compendium all of his musings, commentaries and stories to date.
During his brief but eventful literary career so far, Jack has been a blogger, providing an insightful commentary on rural life and Scots culture; a short story writer; and most recently a political commentator through his McSerial contributions to the McStorytellers website.
The Complete TattyBogle, Jack's first “real book” published by McStorytellers in 2015, brings together in a handy compendium all of his musings, commentaries and stories to date.