on Watermelons

A Watermelon: green on the outside... but red on the inside

Just as many free-marketeers are tax dodgers, many environmentalists are socialists. That's life. It's up to me to dissassociate myself from knobhead libertarians, and it's up to environmentalists to shun socialists. I'm here to help!

Here are four suggestions on how to scratch an environmentalist, to see what's lurking beneath the surface:

• Do you think a minimum wage is an effective way to help the poor?

This is the quick & easy way to gage someone's basic economic competency. Distinguished economic writers on the left and on the right agree (as do I) that minimum wages harm low-skilled workers.

• Do you think wealth accumulation is the result of exploitation?

It can be, but only if you've got excessive power - and i'm yet to see a firm that has managed to exploit people without the help of government. Only a collectivist view of economics fails to understand the mutual gains from trade (that make it win-win), and therefore conclude that wealth accumulation implies exploitation.

• Do you see profit-seeking business as a hindrence to ethical consumerism?

Times were, most people did. Hopefully we can all proceed with the agreement that profit-seeking business is a natural, important social phenomena capable of championing ethical consumer behaviour.

• Do you lament the tastes of others?

Typically this is embodied in the elitist distinction between high and low culture, but is generally found wherever "experts" pour scorn on the tastes of others. (Note: this is different from saying that people have had varying degrees of education, or that we have a right to persuade others to change their preferences).

Applying this watermelon to the case of my recent fairtrade shenanigans, despite their rhetoric I know that Green LA Girl supports the minimum wage, thinks coffee profits come from exploitation, and supports the Fairtrade foundation - who's very being is to promote high quality coffee and elimate (via incineration) low quality beans.

Comments

[Matthew Whitfield]

Do you think a minimum wage is an effective way to help the poor?

Sure do! I mean, we're talking a low, low baseline here. Surely low income workers deserve legal protection of wages up to the pitiful level it's been set?

Do you think wealth accumulation is the result of exploitation?

Like you, not always. Sometimes it's just clever people who've made a lot of money. Good luck to them.

Do you see profit-seeking business as a hindrence to ethical consumerism?

Yep. It's not at all incompatible with ethics, but it is a hindrance, because the profit motive is stronger than any other imperitive.

Do you lament the tastes of others?

Not 'lament'...that would suggest long hours spent weeping against a window at the very thought of velour tracksuits. No, I just appreciate that I'm pretty wierd and have radically different tastes and values to an awful lot of people. That makes me the odd one, but I'm happy with that.

Does that make me a Socialist? Don't answer that, I know I am. Will I now be taken by force to a special Dissident Retraining Camp at Bluewater Shopping Centre, brought to me in association with Starbucks?

[AJE]

Ah, but the question is Are you an environmentalist? Or, at, least, do you pose as one?

If not then fine. But this is a means to realise that many people who claim to support the environment do no such thing. People who write in the Guardian, for example.

[Matthew Whitfield]

Oh, um, you've lost me now. Do you just not trust environmentalists to be honest about their motives? If they are socialist, alongside their evironmental concerns, must they spell that out?

If you're looking for labels then I suppose I'm not an 'environmentalist' as I think of that as a proper job with a charity or specialist publication, ot at the very least membership of the Green Party. I do care about the environment, though, along with millions of people across the political spectrum. Do you reckon David Cameron is a socialist?

[DrinnanaT]

Was lookin' for this... I might even
have to throw down a bookmark.

Nickster
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