• Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 months ago

    Buying bananas to help people in developing countries is like shopping at Walmart to help the employees. The vast majority of that money isn’t going to them.

    • jimbo@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Buying bananas to help people in developing countries is like shopping at Walmart to help the employees. The vast majority of that money isn’t going to them.

      This is true, but at the end of the day, that’s where those people get the money they need to survive. Refusing to buy a banana isn’t going to magic them up another industry.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        Sure, but don’t pretend it’s for the benefit of the people working in unsafe conditions for extreme poverty wages to provide the developed world with cheap bananas.

        An individual not buying bananas isn’t going to change the industry, and neither is telling people you have to buy bananas to save the poor banana farm workers.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      That’s really short sighted and screws over people.

      With any product, the vast majority of money goes to rich capitalists.

      But for a banana farmer, all their money comes from selling bananas. Sure, short term they could switch to manioc or rice or tobacco or some other tropical produce, but if no one buys those products, they have no income.

      Longer term, they try to give their kids education so that the next generation will not be banana farmers, but that’s only possible if they have enough money to send kids to school.

      Buying fair trade Bananas is the best thing we can do to help them, aside from charity. Buying normal bananas is the second best thing that can be done.