Ch. 23, Mayan Coffee, Cobalt Mining in Congo

I found chapter 23 very interesting because I like to learn about the statistics behind demography. The first type of measuring inequality takes countries at face value, ranking them by their average income. The second type accounts for weighting based on the population of the countries. The author goes on to talk about the preferred method used by different people based on their perspective on globalization. The people who support globalization prefer inequality 2 because it shows that the nations of the world are becoming more equal. Those who oppose globalization prefer inequality 1 because it makes the gaps between nations seem larger. I think this divide ties back into chapters 76 and 77 from last week, as we talked about the differences in ideology between groups who oppose and defend globalization. As far as what I think, there is no one correct measurement to determine inequality. I think that a combination of multiple statistics is necessary. It is also important to note that over the entire course of human history there is a trend of trying to quantify people and use statistics to characterize them. This is one of those situations where it doesn't work because its just not possible to sum up every aspect of inequality into a single number. It's arbitrary and I think its just a cop out way of grading and solving problems by labelling things as simply as possible.

The article about Mayan coffee serves as a sort of case study for the concepts discussed in chapter 23. One thing that stood out to me was that the author said that even though fair trade had positive impacts on coffee farmers, 83% of them still said that the fair trade price was not high enough for them. I think this is a great demonstration of how some inequality statistics can be misleading, especially inequality 2. In the case of this article, it seems like the inequalities within Guatemala are shrinking because the farmers at the bottom received extra income through fair trade. However, the price not being enough for the majority of the farmers shows how the population weighting statistic may show something that actually isn't. The article is a great example of why inequality approach 3 is more accurate than the other 2. The author sits down with the individual farmers rather than generalizing them all into a group. This best shows the disparities between people inside of the collective, which inequalities 1 and 2 would not show at all.

The article about Cobalt mining in Congo discusses the supply chain of the mineral from the batteries in phones and vehicles all the way back down to the mines in Africa where adults and children alike are exploited for their labor. One line that stood out to me from the beginning was, "Mayamba, 35, knew nothing about his role in this sprawling global supply chain." The flip side of this was companies like Apple being out of touch with the realities of the supply chain, or at least playing dumb about it for PR. This emphasizes once again the differences that cannot be seen on that chart from chapter 23, where it shows the convergence. Convergence implies that the world is becoming more connected through globalization, which is the purpose, however it is not relfected in how things really go. The sides that are supposed to be getting closer and more connected and the producers and the companies who pay for their labor, directly or indirectly. Neither Mayamba nor Apple had any idea they were working within the same chain. There's also an important connection between the case of Congo and the Mayan coffee farmers. In both cases the workers barely make anything, while the industries they work for pump billions into the pockets of those at the top of the chain. However, the Mayan coffee farmers at least have some form of help in their free trade agreement. The workers in Congo do not. They are an example of what it would be like in Guatemala without the collective agreement, which further emphasizes the scale of the problem since the situation in Guatemala still isn't good enough for 83% of the farmers.