Prakash Per­sad

Do hard­ware own­ers have any con­science? It would be in­ter­est­ing to hear the views of those who were, over the past few weeks, in need of ce­ment. A cou­ple of years ago, we faced a se­ri­ous drought in the first half of the year. The al­ready un­re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply be­came more un­re­li­able and scarce. The norm of hav­ing one wa­ter tank in the home to serve as a buffer, to mit­i­gate the ef­fects of the op­er­a­tions of the wa­ter util­i­ty, was prov­ing to be in­ad­e­quate.

So those with one tank want­ed an­oth­er one for peace of mind and clean­li­ness of body. The few who were of the view that they did not need one sud­den­ly re­alised the er­ror of their ways. In short, there was a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er de­mand for wa­ter tanks.

Nor­mal­ly, one would ex­pect that larg­er-sale vol­umes would re­sult in low­er prices. Well, as we all know, few things in God's coun­try are hand­i­capped by nor­mal­cy. The price of wa­ter tanks shot up. Con­sumers had to pay through their noses.

Come this year, cour­tesy an ag­gres­sive, con­fronta­tion­al and pow­er­ful union, the coun­try's ce­ment pro­duc­tion was halt­ed ini­tial­ly and even when re­sumed was un­able to sat­is­fy the mar­ket de­mands. Ce­ment prices rose as­tro­nom­i­cal­ly. Those who were in­volved in con­struc­tion faced the choice of ei­ther bear­ing the cost of the de­lay in com­ple­tion or the cost of ar­ti­fi­cial­ly in­flat­ed ce­ment prices. Re­sort­ing to high­er prices to re­turn high­er prof­its in times of scarci­ty is called prof­i­teer­ing. It is un­eth­i­cal, im­moral and should be il­le­gal. It is tan­ta­mount to eco­nom­ic pira­cy.

Con­sumers were plun­dered by those who sought to prof­it, lit­er­al­ly, from the dis­tress faced by, among oth­ers, peo­ple en­gaged in build­ing and re­pair­ing their prop­er­ties and small busi­ness­es pro­duc­ing con­crete prod­ucts. The eco­nom­ic cri­sis fac­ing large parts of the globe is due, in no small part, to the un­in­hib­it­ed dri­ve to max­imise prof­its.

Un­bri­dled cap­i­tal­ism is a most de­struc­tive force that needs to be checked through leg­is­la­tion. This is be­ing done in a few pro­gres­sive de­vel­oped coun­tries.

His­to­ry has shown that com­mu­nism is not the an­swer for sus­tained eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. It has al­so vivid­ly demon­strat­ed that un­prin­ci­pled cap­i­tal­ism is just as flawed. What is need­ed is a sys­tem that al­lows for all in­di­vid­u­als to be able to as­cend the eco­nom­ic lad­der but not let the rich, who form the mi­nor­i­ty, to ex­ert un­due self-serv­ing in­flu­ence.

So what is an ac­cept­able and rea­son­able mod­el? Many vari­a­tions are present­ly in ex­is­tence. They range from the "cap­i­tal­is­tic com­mu­nism" to "so­cial­is­tic cap­i­tal­ism." Here in T&T, on the face of ev­i­dence, the one thing that both union and busi­ness lead­ers would agree on is the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal and the perks they bring. It is thus self-ev­i­dent that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens would want a cap­i­tal­is­tic based sys­tem but with leg­isla­tive con­trols to en­sure that cor­po­rate and union greed is kept in check.

In ad­di­tion to good leg­is­la­tion, the mon­i­tor­ing of ad­her­ence to them and tax­a­tion regimes, some con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to im­pos­ing salary caps, es­pe­cial­ly those that are in re­ceipt of state fund­ing, pen­sions and in­sur­ance poli­cies. Truth in ad­ver­tis­ing should be a ne­ces­si­ty for those sell­ing fi­nan­cial prod­ucts as they ex­ploit weak­ness­es in the fi­nan­cial moral fi­bre of cit­i­zens.

It would ap­pear that our cit­i­zens are quite vul­ner­a­ble in this re­gard, as in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion to com­mon sense many opt for schemes that turn out to be ex­act­ly that, with the re­sul­tant loss. There needs to be a sus­tained pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme on the risks in­volved. In­deed, one may be tempt­ed to call for leg­is­la­tion that would ban all forms of chance-based fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ties as they ex­ploit the hu­man at­trib­ut­es of hope­ful­ness in scor­ing big. Sim­ple arith­metic would show that the mon­ey spent by the tens of mil­lions over their lives vast­ly out­weigh that won by the few.

The chance-based busi­ness is a form of prof­i­teer­ing, one that ben­e­fits enor­mous­ly from the scarci­ty of un­der­stand­ing of the risks in­volved, prob­a­bil­i­ty and chance. Cap­i­tal­ism is good, ex­ploita­tion by cap­i­tal­ists, of both the union and busi­ness va­ri­eties, is not.