Kevin Baldeosingh
History shows that every nation which has tried socialism–from Russia where it started in 1917 to Cuba in 1959 to Jamaica in 1973–has suffered from a chronic shortage of toilet paper.
Most economists assert that this is because socialist governments either nationalise toilet paper companies or impose price controls on toilet paper. Economic principles dictate that price controls lead to shortages, since people buy up the price-controlled item or because production drops below demand or both. Socialist principles, however, dictate that shortages are always caused by the CIA stealing toilet paper or causing diarrhoea or both.
Socialist leaders have found various ways to address this problem. Chairman Mao between 1958 and 1961 saved toilet paper by starving 40 million peasants to death, but this solution was considered extreme everywhere except in China, where the famine is still called "Three Years of Difficulties."
Cuban leader Fidel Castro solved the problem personally, but it took him 84 years and a plastic anus while ordinary Cubans still do not have freedom of bowel movement. And in North Korea, there is no need for toilet paper since happy citizens get a daily supply of pamphlets telling them that Kim Jong-un is so supreme a leader that he does not need toilet paper.
So last week Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro came here to talk with Prime Minister Keith Rowley about trade, security and spying on citizens. His arrival was hailed by leading trade unionists, who in a show of solidarity refused to go to the restroom for the duration of Maduro's visit and protested against poor people in capitalist societies being forced to use toilet paper which lacks safety standards. Yet no economist has given a cogent analysis of whether T&T can sell toilet paper to Venezuela and, if so, should it be absorbent?
This is the crux of the matter and, save for whether the influx of Venezuelan prostitutes will drive the price of sex down, everything else is trivial. Curiously, Trade Minister and Obama hugger Paula Gopee-Scoon omitted to mention toilet paper among the items for the US$50 million deal. Instead, she listed butter, chicken, pork, ketchup, rice and black beans: but, of course, this will only help ensure that toilet paper is used up even more quickly, especially the beans.
Thus, Venezuela's woes may well be T&T's salvation. Not only will selling toilet paper help stave off our recession, but this is a tissue issue where tripartite co-operation should be no problem at all. After all, the Rowley administration wants to help Venezuela; the trade unionists love Maduro's socialist policies; and business people stand to make a profit.
For these reasons alone, Trinbagonians should be grateful to the late Hugo Chavez and, by extension, Karl Marx, who laid the foundation for Venezuela's economic collapse with his theory of class conflict, which holds that toilets are a bourgeoisie device and the classless society will have nothing but latrines. "Toilet paper should be classified as an essential good, like food and shelter and lesbian porn," he famously declared in Das Kapital.
In doing research for this column by taking a nap, I also discovered that celebrated UWI economist Norman Girvan spent a lot of time thinking about this problem, since he loved curry but had a weak stomach. In collaboration with even more celebrated UWI economist George Beckford, Girvan created a formula– T= t/p X s, where T is time, t is tissue, p is people and s is stool–that explains both toilet paper and Maha Sabha leader Sat Maharaj's support of child marriage.
However, the Nobel laureate development economist W Arthur Lewis noted that the Girvan/Beckford equation did not factor in the amount of bs that socialists spout, which may well be infinite. In more recent work, UWI economist Roger Hosein calculated toilet paper demand by applying a Laffer Curve to the rhetoric of MSJ leader David Abdulah, tulsi leaf eater Wayne Kublalsingh, and sundry gender feminists, after which he had to be hospitalised for dysentery. Dr Dhanayshar Mahabir, in turn, has pointed out that none of these models include money spent on Pepto Bismol.
Thus, even if the US$50 million was spent only to buy toilet paper for Venezuela's 28 million people, the supply wouldn't last more than three months, and only a little longer if Venezuelans split two-ply into one. On the other hand, Minister Gopee-Scoon, presumably taking her lead from the PNM's traditional approach to governance, said, "We have not looked at price at all."
Which is what makes toilet paper priceless, at least in Venezuela.
Email: kevin.baldeosingh@zoho.com
Kevin Baldeosingh is a professional writer, author of three novels and co-author of a Caribbean history textbook.