David M. Drucker Drucker is a history
student in his final quarter at UCLA. E-mail him at [email protected].
Hello, kiddies. You thought you were attending UCLA. Well,
I’ve got news for you…
Welcome to fantasy land.
Revered around the world for a top-notch medical center and an
athletic program that earned more NCAA titles than any other
university in the 20th century ““ among other notable
achievements ““ Berkeley’s grown-up baby brother also
happens to be the land of the free-of-charge.
Or so our well-intentioned but naive fellow Bruin liberal
activists would have us believe.
Tune in to their political and economic agendas, and
you’ll be hard pressed to find an honest cost-benefit
analysis of the solutions they propose as a cure for
society’s presumed ills.
Liberal activists on campus ““ there aren’t any
conservative groups here to criticize ““ still cling to the
childish notion that it’s possible to “have it
all.”
That’s not to say the experts headquartered on Kerckhoff
Hall’s third floor are incorrect.
Who knows? Developing countries may be the victim of corporate
exploitation. The environment may be facing irreversible damage due
to human carelessness.
Fair enough.
 Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin Reasonable people
can stipulate to the fact that the world has problems.
But what those on the left must do is cut the Pollyanna attitude
and admit that the policies they advocate, just like policies
advocated by their compatriots on the right, come with a price
tag.
And it would be nice if UCLA itself (paid to educate, not
insulate us) did not go around playing fairy godmother.
According to the Daily Bruin (“Hospital to serve
fair trade coffee,” News, May 1), the medical
center’s Café Med will convert 90 percent of its coffee
menu to fair-trade coffee beginning May 21. What do the menu
changes of some obscure cafe have to do with anything?
Everything.
The hospital plans to absorb the increased costs of the coffee
they sell instead of passing it along to their customers (i.e. you
and me). Excuse me, since when did Bruin Walk get paved over with
the yellow brick road?
In the real world ““ and we’re not talking the movies
““ businesses can’t afford to randomly absorb an
increase in the cost of a major good. It doesn’t take an
Anderson School IQ to understand the point.
Businesses use profits to pay their employees and ensure that
they can survive the economy’s fickle behavior. Lower profits
mean less money to pay their employees and a reduced chance of
surviving a recession.
“We plan on raising awareness about our coffee to our
customers without raising our prices,” Hospitalities Service
Manager Rey Hernandez told The Bruin.
Hey Rey, I’m with you, man.
But if you really want to “raise awareness,” how
about passing the hat and raising prices. Let your clientele know
that Café Med supports cutting back on deforestation and
paying coffee growers $1.26 as opposed to 50 cents per pound. Let
them know that you believe the aforementioned benefits outweigh the
increased costs that students and faculty will now have to pay.
Otherwise, what kind of light are you shedding on the issue?
The student body sure isn’t going to learn anything from
this exercise. Quite the contrary, your average Café Med
customer will probably figure that the coffee houses located on
campus-proper are price gouging the populace and exploiting
helpless South American farmers just to make a few extra
pennies.
By the way, has anyone bothered to mention the negative aspects
of artificially inflating and controlling coffee prices? The
benefits may prove worth the costs, but has anyone honestly
discussed the matter?
Here’s some caffeine for thought: Let’s say some
poor farm worker in Columbia decides he’d like to improve his
standard of living ““ and he figures he can do this by buying
some land and growing his own coffee that he’ll then sell on
the world market.
If environmental lobbyists are successful and eventually
convince Sara Lee Corporation (one of the world’s largest
wholesale coffee buyers) to purchase only “fair trade”
coffee, how’s a new farmer suppose to compete? It won’t
do him any good to sell at lower prices, which is the traditional
way in for new businesses in a competitive market.
Ultimately, this movement for “fair trade”
pick-me-up could entrench the current landowners and farmers,
leaving the little guy permanently out of the advancement loop.
That goes double for factory workers overseas.
For all of my comrades fighting for a decent “living
wage” for foreign workers, here’s a double shot of
reality: if you ever succeed in forcing large international
companies to pay laborers in developing nations a wage on par with
what we consider acceptable in America, you might actually cost
them their jobs.
After all, Nike didn’t decide to manufacture shoes half a
world and three languages away because they like to travel. They
did it because there were millions of unskilled, unemployed
laborers in developing nations living in huts with plush hard-dirt
floors whose only commodity was their willingness to work for much
less than anyone in this country.
Eliminate that commodity, and for the most part, manufacturers
will stay home. Incidentally, say goodbye to the inexpensive, high
quality goods that make life so much easier for poor and
middle-class folks here in the States.
Admittedly, the issue is more complex than that. Corporations
are not bastions of charitable concern for their employees. And
there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with advocating improved
working conditions.
But it’s time for labor activists to stop arguing that
corporations are run by X-Files Smoking-Man-like committees who can
do anything they want, anytime they want. Things cost money, and if
businesses don’t make enough of it, they won’t be able
to employ anybody ““ at any wage.
If labor activists believe that the benefits to society from
hiking salaries outweigh the risks of job stagnation or loss, let
them say so.
If you believe that society will gain more from stricter working
condition standards than it will lose in the inflation of prices
that may result, then please, have the gumption to say so.
In typical Marxist hyperbole, third-year environmental studies
student Greg Horn recently lamented the fact that he’s forced
to make choices. “Do I clothe myself and support
sweatshops,” he asked, “or do I walk around
naked?” (“Capitalism taking
over planet,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, May 1).
Whether or not Horn’s options are that stark is debatable.
But he got one thing right: life involves choices. Some of them may
be more palatable than others, but they all come with a cost.
It’d be nice if our friends on the left admitted as much
in their arguments.