Price gouging in a time of goodwill

As is well known, for the average Trini “money is no problem”, after that Williams comment of a long time ago, even though our economic circumstances in the present hardly warrants such extravagance.

But for many, money may still be not a problem.

For when I look at the show of wealth in this country in the form of huge edifices and fancy Range Rovers among those who hardly possess the conventional requisites to attain such, and who, incidentally, would have hardly questioned the price of tomatoes, I succumbed to the temptation of thinking how misdirected my poor parents may have been.

They believed that education and hard work were the means to a good, comfortable life when that, and much more, could have been easily attained by simply aligning to a politics of patronage and privilege as in the recent past and even now in the present, without even uttering a proper sentence. But I digress.

To return to my tomato vendor who in an almost reverential tone told me of the $13 for the small tomatoes, even as he was humming bhajans (holy songs) coming from a tape recorder in the background, which reminded me that it was Divali time.

It was then the stark irony hit home for this was a time of goodwill and here I was under the gun as it were. And what doubled the irony was the fact that it was during this holy festival that vegetables like tomatoes are at a premium because of the abstinence from meat, and this occasion provided the perfect opportunity for the obvious price gouging I was experiencing at the hands of this vendor.

Of course those “concerned” for the small man would huff and puff at my “meanness”, claiming that such people work hard for their living. But all of us do, and as buyers we must begin to set the pace for a culture which reinforces the idea of a fair price, so that even as the vendor can “make” something, we as buyers can live too.

This balance I ask for is the essence of survival, indeed the universe, and exploitation of the kind this vendor practised is the anomaly in the world that tilts that balance, creating chaos.

The result is that instead of mutual survival, some store their treasures on earth while others go hungry.

But to ask people to be fair and just, especially in matters like these, is to deny their natural propensity for self-interest, which is why there will always be people on the receiving end like myself.

DR ERROL BENJAMIN ebenjamin522