There’s a crappy editorial at the LA Times this morning, in which writer Charlotte Allen clucks her tongue at the growing argument against cheap goods, in this case, argued by Ellen Ruppel Shell in her book Cheap. It’s garbage, because Allen fails to take down Cheap‘s base argument, that cheap means someone upstream had to pay the real cost for cheapness.
Consequently the “debate” goes like this:
Ruppert Shell: Cheap goods have hidden costs in labor abuse, in eco damage, and in transglobal shipping. If consumers don’t pay it in the final cost, someone else had to have paid it earlier, whether they wanted to or not.
Allen: What’s wrong with cheap? I love Ikea.
Uh huh. It’s about that dumb.
The real thrust of the article, though, seems to be reserved for Allen’s attack on sustainable foodies and locavores as elitists. Her editorial skates on thicker ice, here, since the principles whom she attacks, Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, have opened themselves to charges of elitism by saying that Americans should be paying more for food.
First off, you can’t call Alice Waters an elitist, Ms. Allen — that’s my job.
Second of all, because you failed to take down Cheap, you also fail to take down Waters or Pollan here. Their basic argument after all is the same as Ruppel Shell’s: Cheap food means subsidized ingredients (your tax dollars made them cheap). Cheap food means centralizing production and intensifying the impact on water supplies and soils.Cheap food means pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides to maximize yield.
Cheap food also means cheap labor, almost always. It can mean workers aren’t getting paid decent wages — or worse. Turn your attention to Hawaii, please:
The Justice Department announced the indictment of Alec Souphone Sou and Mike Mankone Sou, owners of Aloun Farm in Hawaii, and Thai labor recruiter William Khoo late yesterday for engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labor and visa fraud.
The charges arise from the defendants’ alleged scheme to coerce the labor and services of [44] Thai nationals brought by the defendants to Hawaii to work under the federal agricultural guest worker program. Both Sou defendants are also charged with conspiring to commit document servitude.
Document servitude is Justice-speak for slavery. Here’s how it worked:
The 44 workers each paid an upfront $16,000 recruitment fee for what were supposed to be temporary jobs, said Susan French, trial attorney with the Justice Department’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. The money paid for the workers’ airfare and visa applications, she said. Khoo, local Thai recruiting companies, the Sous, Chowsanitphon and an unnamed co-conspirator allegedly split the rest.
The workers paid the fee with loans secured with their homes and subsistence farm lands, according to the indictment.
Chowsanitphon, 55, traveled to Thailand in 2003, brokered an agreement for Khoo to provide workers to Aloun Farm and escorted the workers to Hawaii in 2004, according to his plea agreement.
He received $5,500 per worker, the indictment said.
How does that translate into cheap food?
The Sous deducted from the workers’ earnings money to pay for their housing, meals and payments for their high-interest bank loans in Thailand to pay for their recruitment fees, leaving them with little or no net pay, the indictment said.
Indeed. What’s wrong with cheap? After all, this actually fulfills the Aloun Farm’s business plan. From the Google cache of Aloun Farm’s downed website:
Aloun Farms mission is to provide the people of Hawaii with the highest quality of fresh locally grown produce at a price that is not only competitive but comparable to mainland farmers.
But hey. In an economy like this one, concessions have to be made, right, Ms. Allen?
