Some of you might have seen the subtitle to the magazine and wondered what "applied counter-economics" means. Let me try to explain.

If you look up counter-economics [1] on Wikipedia, you'll find someone has thought highly enough of my writing to append my definition of fair trade to the existing write-up, and to precede it with my shorthand definition of counter-economics, "money at the service of people, instead of the other way around." However, the person pointed out that I define the term in "a separate but arguably compatible sense" from the (slightly) more common usage.

The philosophy that is most closely associated with counter-eonomics is called agorism [2], also known as market anarchism [3], or as Kevin Carson [4] puts it, free-market anti-capitalism [5]. The counter-economy itself is "grey and black markets," which takes in anything the state does not expressly approve of. It's easy to pigeonhole this as being primarily street drugs and prostitution, but agorists see it more broadly: the cash economy (which might mean "illegal" immigrants, but also might mean babysitters whose pay is not taxed), the barter economy, the gift economy, and so on. Moreover, what makes money for the state and the economic elite hopeless intertwined with it? Exploitation, environmental destruction, and above all, war. The longer you look at the legal economy, the better the illegal economy looks.

I can't decide if I'm an agorist or not, but in the long run, what I call myself is not as important as what I do, and what I do is promote fair trade. Fair trade is neither the black nor grey market, because it is legal. However, by definition, it challenges the dominant assumptions and structures of neoliberal economics. Even now, I'm seeing an upswing in articles all over the web challenging the validity and effectiveness of fair trade. If it continues to grow, corporations will continue to buy it out, and if they cannot, they will petition the government to outlaw it. Not directly, of course -- it wouldn't be seemly to pass a law against paying workers well. Rather, you'll see laws that chip away at any market advantages that fair trade brings. One might limit the ways fair trade can be labeled, which would keep buyers ignorant and undermine price signals. Another might impose "standards" on all businesses in a given sector -- standards that only multinationals have the resources to meet. This isn't idle speculation... it's already happened to organics.

This is evidence that the agorists are right to lump the state in with the executives of trickle-up economics. Far from the enemy of big business, government is all but indistiguishable from it. As Marx put it, "the state is executive committee of the ruling class." The protestations of the voices of neoliberals does not disprove this, it only obscures it, which is what allows it to happen in the first place.

Counter-economics means a market that is truly free. If one free person can negotiate in good faith with another free person, and not close the deal until both are happy with the terms, then the classical idea of a self-regulating market will come true. The very purpose of the modern corporation, however, is to unbalance the equation, and strip away power from both the worker and the consumer. This is not freedom.

I have become convinced that power, freedom, and dignity are all names for the same thing, and the surest sign you have it is that you respect it, reinforce it, and reward it in others. This is what fair trade is all about. When we buy corporate products, it accepts the power imbalance, and treats it as fair, because of our very willingness to participate on the corporation's terms. When we buy fair trade, we reinforce our neighbors and peers, and circulate power within the community. For now, this is counter-economics, but one day, it will simply be economics.