This is the original mises.org article I read. Here is their original blog post about it with some commentary.

This is a lewrockwell.com short article on the same thing. Lewrockwell.com and mises.org are connected, but lewrockwell.com is much more vitriolic about anything that smells of big government.

This is a blog from Exploit the Worker on fair trade coffee. It links the mises.org article.

This is an article from the Adam Smith institute on fair trade coffee.

This is from the Globalization Institute. They bring up that most of the fair trade coffee is from Mexico, who is much richer than Ethiopia who invented coffee. Wages are much, much higher in Mexico. Therefore, fair trade coffee hurts lower wage Ethiopians. They also link to the Fair Trade organization that likes fair trade coffee. Know thy enemies, I guess.

[jackdied] I loathe the charity-consumerism for two reasons. One, what is the chance my beverage preference lines up with my charity preference. Should I pick a coffee that I like but gives zero to any chairities I do or I buy the coffee that I only kinda like that gives to a charity I endorse? Why not just give $0.05 a day to a charity I like and drink the coffee I like. Two, this is plainly marketing. If the company isn't making more money net by a promise of righteousness why would they do it at all? If they were righteous they would put an admonition on the cup to donate to some poor bastard. Guilt and enlightenment don't sell, instead they assure you that you have purchased grace on the cheap.

On a more serious note, why don't the left endorse a notion of tithing? As I understand it tithing simply requires 10% of after tax income to be donated to a charity (and not even a USDA charity, the donor decides by his own conscience). Hate the jesus freaks all you like, the money given by choice is more judiciously spent than the money from taxes or coffee where the donor has only a vague idea of the cause he is donating to and the manner in which it is applied. Most charities have fscked up goals, solving the situation is eliminating their purpose - how many hunger charities raise money to deliver corn and how many raise money to deliver tractors? Maybe I'm just a contrarian, but I'm a tractor guy.

Update Jul22: As much as I liked the "purchase grace on the cheap" line, Anthony Daniels says it better in the Aug 8 issue of National Review as he mocks the Live-8 concert.

The expression of high-flown sentiment, or rather sentimentality, is thereby made the very model of human goodness; and the more vehement the expression, the more profound the goodness. In the process, the difference between sanctity and sanctimony disappears, and with it our ability to distinguish between the two.