K law of supply and demand is the first rule of capitalist economics. Prices go up when demand is great but supply is inadequate. Prices go down when there is little demand, but there is a surplus of goods.

It is alleged that some business owners and supermarket operators create artificial shortages to send up the prices. And in times of a glut of farm produce, some farmers will destroy some of the produce to send up the prices. This is totally immoral.

I went into a popular fast food outlet two Sundays ago. They were advertising a fish burger at the counter. I thought of trying it but opted to purchase one of the chicken burgers. I was told that they did not have the particular chicken burger I asked for, but the fish burger was available. At that point I asked if there were any chicken burgers at all and was told that there were others, so I ordered one of the other chicken burgers available. They were obviously attempting to force me to buy the fish burger. Was it that they got a cheap supply of fish and decided to force customers to buy them as burgers?

Some cellphone companies advertise different phones. Let’s say, you have sufficient points to choose a certain cellphone within your purchasing capacity, but when you ask for one phone they tell you it is out of supply and want to interest you in a more expensive one. I believe this to be another case of creating an artificial shortage.

Sometimes what is done is not to create a shortage but to create a need. Schools are on holiday and, while many are idle, others are going off to camps, others are working. Many parents are spending the whole summer searching bookstores for items on booklists for the children.

From their utterances, if certain food-processing companies had their way there would be far less or even no summer holidays so that the schoolchildren would have to buy food in the canteens, which would keep their sales constant throughout the year.

There is a difference between buses that go from downtown Kingston to Montego Bay, from Kingston to Ocho Rios, or from Kingston to Mandeville on the one hand, and buses that go between Half-Way-Tree to Port Antonio on the other. There are many buses that go from Kingston to Mandeville and back, and the same goes for Kingston to Montego Bay or Kingston to Ocho Rios. This means that the drivers and bus conductors going westward might not be as discourteous as those who operate buses from Half-Way-Tree and Port Antonio, as there are far less buses for passengers. Commuters are forced to put up with all sorts of things from Half-Way-Tree to Port Antonio that they would not necessarily have to put up with if they were going from Kingston to Montego Bay. The law of supply and demand is also at work here.

Many Jamaicans are under stress, which leads to heart attacks and cancer. And this stress is caused by worrying about when the hire purchase people will come for the bed or the fridge or the TV. Those up the economic scale wonder when the financial institutions are coming for the car or the house. So they are forced to keep jobs that they do not like and put up with all sorts of injustices at the workplace just to pay the bills.

The co-operative movement of Jamaica, in its earlier days, had what were called consumer societies. There were quite a few co-operative shops in the early days. Unfortunately many co-operators were allowed to take food on credit and never repaid, so they all went under. Perhaps it is time to try this method again, especially if we ever go back to the days of artificial food shortages.

If the commuters between Kingston and Portland were to form themselves into a Kingston to Portland Commuters Association, with a view to forming a co-operative or benevolent society, it might work for them. What they could do is to join the credit unions and vote on the surplus so that they could eventually purchase three or four Coaster buses to increase the amount of buses that provide transportation on this route.

With greater competition one might be pleasantly surprised to see how the attitudes of certain bus operators change for the better. And if one can get to work on time to jobs needed to pay the bills, then that might lessen the stress.

It would mean that everyone would be entitled to dividends from the profits. It would mean that further dividends could be made by chartering for excursions and so on, especially on public holidays. If people have enough of an income from a co-operative entity, it would mean that they could use that income to borrow from financial institutions.

Not being dependent on their other workplace to finance their loans, through their salaries, it would mean that the boss could not hold them to ransom. This, in turn, will reduce the stress.

The superior general of the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa Sisters) Sister Mary Prima Pierick paid a visit to Jamaica two weeks ago. In an interview she was asked by me if there were any plans for the day when the world would not have hungry people to feed if there was a greater supply of the world’s goods which would lessen the demands. She said Mother Teresa was asked the same question and said that the sisters would be unemployed.

We need to establish a world where there is real economic independence. This is why the Roman Catholic Church established the first set of credit unions in Jamaica in 1941.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com

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