Consumer power in this time of covid

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

LIKE WITH covid19 deaths and much else, we seem resigned to our fate about skyrocketing prices. An editorial in a daily last week, captioned “Caring for the consumer,” focuses on this issue, talking about the people’s plight and the need for immediate solutions. But will the powers that be listen? Do they ever listen?

My jaw-dropping experience of trying to shop for some basic household items the last weekend of January should tell a story and wake us up from our slumber: $370 for one fence post lantern when a pair was less than $225-$250 the last time I bought them; $320 to replace faulty tints on the car when six months ago the estimate was $150; $45 for a 3.2 kg of rice when last December it was under $20 for a 2kg; a packet of frozen chicken previously $33-35 has now gone to $58.

And taking a cursory glance at the ads on used cars, the innocuous looking “ks” at the end of numbered prices spell doom for the poor/middle man, for whom, according to Visham Babwah, the industry was initiated. And I can go on and on.

Surely, price increases are inevitable and they often have to do with what the economists call the “supply and demand” principle. If supply is short, demand increases and prices go up. The new word, however, which has become fashionable in the lexicon of supply and demand is “freight,” which has always been a factor in the price issue but has now taken centre stage because of the pandemic. Every increase is now attributed to rampant freight increases.

The threesome of supply, demand and freight, inter alia, have always impacted prices but always it was taken for granted that here would have been a fair sense of proportion among all these players. But now with prices sky-high as they are, in some cases over 100 per cent, it begs the question of whether there are issues involved other than the purely economic. Is it possibly opportunism at its worst, making exorbitant prices appear to be the “natural” consequence of the ravages of covid19 on the supply/demand/freight chain, when in fact such prices are brutally out of proportion to the actual expenses involved?

No one would deny the extra expenditure on the supply chain and the need for higher prices, but when “mark-ups” degenerate into downright profiteering at the expense of the people, that is a cause for great concern, and it clearly illustrates how the seemingly legitimate business maxim of “profit to max” can lose the social responsibility it is supposed to carry.

Which is precisely the problem. “Sellers” presume to have this unbridled power over the customer but are consumers aware that they possess their own kind of power to hold unscrupulous sellers at bay? Official oversight would be a great first step for the consumer with an efficient monitoring system and penalties for those found culpable.

Such is wishful thinking, however, for there is virtually no working apparatus for such, and if even there were, self-serving public officials, as is common knowledge, are ever ready to sell-off the consumer to the seller. And to look for relief from the Government is another pie in the sky for the much trumped-up VAT relief is now blowing in the wind, and if they can’t increase the food card grant what can people expect?

All this, of course, at a time when the holes in our pockets become deeper and deeper because of the unemployment ravages of the pandemic.

So where do we stand in all this? The consumer has no choice but to exercise his own power. He can simply walk away, making hard choices as I did, for replacing a broken lantern on a fence post is not a matter of life and death. Added to this you have to change your consumption pattern, putting aside the “luxuries” you have been seeing on TV, and without starving yourself or reducing yourself to a hermit in survival mode, you can have a decent meal and make do with the basic essentials without choking yourself to death on prices way beyond you.

Further, you must now “go local” for even as some of the vendors continue to overcharge you exploiting the pandemic, you can beat them and others like them by buying one pound instead of two, or you can “chook” a little cassava stick or a plantain shoot in the ground and watch it grow for the future, or do the same with a little chive and celery in abandoned containers around.

All this not merely to produce your own for consumption but to build a family culture of self-sufficiency, taking pride in watching your single tomato grow and bear fruit and eating it with a delicacy and pride hitherto unknown.

And what would be the inevitable effect of all this? A kind of reversible reaction in which you empower yourself, leaving your original exploiter gasping for breath. For make no mistake, if sales continue to go down, the cumulative effect in the long term is that businesses and other sellers will begin to shrivel and die, as with Trincity Mall et al going up for sale because of the lack of patronage.

But hearts of hearts, we do not want our businesses to fold and die for, ironically, the future progress of our country depends on their survival and their continuing to function. But it is a hard lesson they must learn that we too as consumers have the power and they should think twice about toying with us, presuming that we would always be there as fodder for their exploitation.