No? If you restricted your purchasing to people growing coffee in specific areas with a high degree of oversight and frequent audits, this wouldn't happen. The coffee would cost (them) a lot more, of course, but it's certainly possible to do this.

The point is an oligarchy could incentivize high worker wages and ethical business practices through lots of mechanisms, the primary one being "pay more money for your supplies." They don't. We should be burying all these companies in the grave.

[–] feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah, no it isn't. If anything it's an indictment of that nature. However it is a mechanistic explanation of how these conditions emerge in supposedly legitimate supply chains. It's very common, unfortunately.

You're correct that the largest purchasers of certain high-value crops can use their stranglehold to improve conditions; a lot of them claim to do so and use this in their own media campaigns. That's why this is such a fuck-up for a company like Starbucks versus, say, a small Scottish berry farm.