I disagree with Lyndersay

THE EDITOR: I usually learn a lot from Mark Lyndersay’s Newsday columns and find his arguments cogent and clearly expressed. However, his piece on January 28 (Carnival is not a product) almost completely lacked these elements. Perhaps this is so because Mr Lyndersay failed to grasp basic principles of economics.

His thesis is that Carnival has failed to achieve its potential because its tangible expressions are destroyed every year: “In its design, the event was a self-immolating act, an Icarus-like soaring to the heavens, leaving only ashes behind on the day after Carnival Tuesday. Costumes were collected and dumped by city disposal trucks,” he wrote.

However, this can equally be interpreted as “creative destruction,” the term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to define the capitalist ethos.

It is this process which ensures progress and growth. Thus, the ephemeral nature of Carnival is not a bug, as Mr Lyndersay thinks, but a feature – ie, by creating scarcity (a higher demand than there is supply) the value of the product is increased.

Mr Lyndersay blames this on Carnival’s “management,” ignoring the history that shows that long before Carnival was an organised festival, its participants also adhered to this pattern, as shown in Earl Lovelace’s classic novel The Dragon Can’t Dance.

Mr Lyndersay also erred in seeing Carnival as a zero-sum game. It is entirely possible to preserve the ephemeral elements while creating institutions or processes to preserve Carnival outside the six-week season. That latter, however, would have be a distinct economic activity that generates its own revenue: for, product or not, nothing lasts unless it can be paid for.

ELTON SINGH

Couva