Generally, the Fairtrade initiative looks promising. It shows how the market can actively value compassion and human decency. “Free market development aid”, in a sense. Nice. But I’m a bit worried when fairtrade.org.uk describe themselves as “campaigning and certification organisation”. Campaigning? Are they trying to become another political pressure group, trying to borrow the coercive power of government? I hope not. It would be nice to see such a nice example how the market the create and sustain a lot of active idealism and desire to help others efficiently. It would be too bad if they would became yet another pressure group.
I don’t know what they mean by campaigning, but there’s nothing wrong with private certification, as long as no one has a monopoly on certification.