Betrayal

I like Trader Joe's markets. Their attitude toward customer service is very humanistic, in my opinion. They strive to produce a positive shopping environment and offer affordable food. Good things. So, you might understand my current sense of being betrayed.

I have to read package labels in markets. I have several food allergies and sensitivities, developed after taking multiple chemotherapies for a variety of problems. This complicates my daily life in a fundamental way.

I drink cocoa in the evening. It is one pleasure that has not become toxic...yet. However, I cannot tolerate high fructose corn syrup or additives made from corn. So, I always attempt to buy pure cocoa powder, a simple, whole food.

This week, I wanted to replenish my cocoa supply at Trader Joe's, where I have bought an ethically traded cocoa powder from Colombia in the past. A very good cocoa, actually. The T.J.'s where I shop regularly did not have the familiar brown container. So, I settled for a blue can which says, "Conacado Organic Fair Trade Cocoa". 'No biggie,' I thought, until I got home and remembered to read the label before putting this new product in my cupboard:

"Ingredients: Organic evaporated sugar cane juice (natural milled cane sugar), organic nonfat dry milk powder, organic cocoa powder, organic guar gum, sea salt, organic carob bean gum, organic vanilla bean powder (organic vanilla extract, organic maltodextrin [corn], organic gum arabic)."

In other words, I had been duped. I had not bought just organic fair trade cocoa. I had bought a hot chocolate mix, similar to all the junky ones I could have found on any major grocery chain's shelf. And, it cost me about twice as much as it would have if it had been Swiss Miss. This was a true miss for me. I forgot to read the label...the entire label in Trader Joe's.

I feel betrayed by Trader Joe. I also feel that this product's label is a misrepresentation, a lie, a fraud. It is just one more example of the loss of ethics in business. Had I consumed this product, I would have been ill, probably for days. I doubt Trader Joe or any of his ilk would care.

Libertarians scream about free markets and abolishing all government regulation of business. Well, for their sakes, I hope they fail on their mission. If they should encounter life changes like those I live with every day, they might well be done in by a mislabeled can of cocoa mix. I would not wish this on anyone.

Swindles

I have a simple suggestion for particular young men and women who work in the financial sector and all the telemarketing, internet marketing, media marketing companies which support the financial sector. Listen up, if this applies to you or someone you know. And, if does not apply to you, share it with anyone you know in the financial (banking and investment) sector of the U.S., to whom you feel it does apply.

Stealing is not a legitimate business. Whether you disguise it as math or options or margins, stealing is stealing. Fraud is fraud. And, selling thin air, numbers without value, is fraudulent and unworthy behavior for anyone with a frontal lobe and a spine. Duping people and exploiting their human weaknesses is unethical and immoral. It cheapens the value of all human life.

Now, I know the federal government, in all its corrupt beneficence, has spared many of you from prosecution and jail time. In fact, for whatever insane reasons, the government has allowed you to continue exploiting the citizens of the U.S. in the name of "saving the economy". But, a great many of us out here just don't buy it.

I am appealing to the better human instincts in any individual person in this so-called industry who reads this. You know what you are doing is hurting people. You know what you are doing is simply accumulating wealth for people a lot richer than you'll ever be or need to be. You know you are contributing to the erosion of American democracy by increasing the gulf between rich and poor.

If you feel in the tiniest way that this message applies to you, I am simply asking you to consider doing something that will help humanity in a simple, direct and concrete way. Yes, you can go on the road of the Madoffs and the Enrons and the AIGs. But, you have a choice. You can choose not to. No matter what you are doing, always question whether you would want it to be done to you.