“At the SEA meetings, Jagdish Bhagwati dismantled the rhetoric of “fair trade” and said something that will stick with me for a long time. I paraphrase here: movements advocating what is grossly and misleadingly called “fair trade” and movements advocating higher minimum wages are filled with people who imagine themselves fine human beings but who are actually busy (unwittingly) doing horrible things to the people they claim to love so much.”
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Bevan Sabo
Ariel Goldring
Guest Blogger
I think that we need to discriminate criticism of free markets from the criticism that is really of market imperfections – and which is generally well justified. Free markets can be very good at optimal decentralised decision making and allocation. There are some good ideas about improving free market operations in a proactive way discussed at http://big-issues.org/.