Word: middlemen
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...energy interests, the state (under then Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican) decided to loosen its hold on electricity production. Responsibility for matching supply and demand was handed over in 1998 to an Independent System Operator (ISO), which would buy from providers (like Enron, Calpine and Dynegy) and sell to middlemen (companies like Pacific Gas & Electric) as necessary, even paying providers to take excess electricity out of the state at times when supplies were flush. And if the markets got too rough? Never fear; price caps were in place...
...town. Because of their high turnover, hypermarkets can throw their weight around with local suppliers by demanding lower prices. Costco buys directly from manufacturers to stock its two stores in Japan?a practice that disrupts the country's entrenched but inefficient distribution networks, which have multiple layers of middlemen. Security expert John Muller, president of McFadden Protection Agency Thailand, theorizes that Tesco's Thai stores may have been attacked by Mafia-like cartels he says control the flow of goods in the country. (Thai police have made no arrests and the cases are unsolved.) Foreign superstores "upset the whole chain...
Some farmers have decided to eliminate these middlemen by forming cooperatives and selling directly to American distributors like “Equal Exchange.” Equal Exchange agrees to buy the fairly traded coffee at $1.26 per pound—$1.41 if it is organically grown. The market price paid by coyotes to farmers fluctuates around 40 cents per pound—the extra dollar goes into the often poverty stricken hands of Latin American, African and Asian coffee farmers...
This redistribution to the workers is consistent with the economic notion of “sweat equity”—those who produce the product have more of a right to it than the middlemen who have take a large percentage of the sale price but add nothing to the product itself...
...found that fairly traded coffee tasted better, or if you value that payments are going directly to farmer cooperatives rather than middlemen, make sure to fill out a comment card or tell your dining hall manager. If you didn’t get a chance to smell the sweet scent of redistribution or savor the smooth taste of high quality organic coffee, make sure to catch a cup next week...