Well, that's markets for you

Not only is this markets for you it's rather the point of markets for you:

The Co-operative Group has told its members that it cannot make an enhanced commitment to stock Fairtrade products because of tough competition among supermarkets and its shift towards convenience stores.

The UK’s largest mutual made the remarks in response to a motion tabled ahead of the upcoming annual general meeting asking for the commitment to Fairtrade – for which the group has prided its link in the past – to be reiterated and also retain the long-term strategic objective that that if a “Co-operative product can be Fairtrade, it will be Fairtrade”.

Saying it could not back all elements of the motion, the board blamed the current financial position of the group and “the austere market climate we continue to face and the strategic direction of the business into convenience shops which naturally increases pressure on space and range”.

There are some out there who desire to purchase Fairtrade products. We don't share that view, thinking them to be counterproductive at best, but we absolutely defend the more basic idea. If your worldview means that you either desire to, or desire not to, purchase products made in a particular manner, or place, of by a certain group of people or not, then that's rather the point of having a market economy. So that you may do so. If enough people share those values of yours then you might even be lucky enough to find that supply arises to meet your desires. This is true of bread without alum, of meat that isn't rotten, of food prepared to certain religious standards and, yes, to things made by poor people in poor countries. It's wonderful, it's glorious in fact.

However, it is worth noting that perhaps not everyone shares your particular worldview. As here: the Co Op finds that while there's enough people who care about Fairtrade to make it worthwhile not enough people care about it to make it compulsory. And that's where we'd slightly argue with the description of it being "competition" that causes this. Because yes, OK, the supermarkets are in competition to sate our desires. And some of us do desire to pay higher prices to provide that outdoor relief for the dimmer children of the upper bourgeoisie that is the real result of Fairtrade. But not all of us: and therefore it's not really the competition between the supermarkets being the problem here, it's that not enough of us Britons share the initial worldview.

Which is, again, one of the great glories of this free market idea. You get to maximise your utility by purchasing things made in the manner you approve of and so do I, we, them and they. According to our different estimations of our own utility.