Even if the senate standing committee on finance hasn’t exactly figured out which particular economic system it wants for the country, it is no longer in the dark about what it doesn’t want. So “anti-consumer” laissez faire will no longer do, and preferably regulated market mechanism should be revived for effective price control. There is a ring of truth in rejecting the free market economy mantra. Suddenly, elected representative around the world are facing stiff public resistance to what is perhaps rightly dubbed exploitative capitalism, its fissures progressively ominous since the giant collapse of ’08.
There is also considerable truth in the committee chairman’s landmark finding that the current model allows a privileged few to hold many hostage, influencing market forces and fluctuating prices at whim. But his suggestion of reviving the magistracy system to check profiteering seems betraying opposition politicking more than genuine concern for the system. For, considering our own example, it is not the system that is so much to blame as those toggling it. Corruption, top to bottom, compromises more resources and funds than market inefficiencies or even spill over of natural calamities. Simply resorting to another form of checks and balances will not do, especially if there isn’t a more important system in place, one that checks and punishes corruption and wrongdoing. Plus, it’s just too obvious to ask the able chairman why such measures were not incorporated during his own watch as finance minister. There will be no satisfactory answer, and that’s where it’ll end.
It bears noting that while the last decade or so has seen the rich-poor gap widen in even the most advanced economies, ours no longer has the cushion where government patronage and subsidies can keep masses quiet much longer. With the poor on the brink of no longer affording subsistence, the winds of change sweeping our part of the world will alter a lot more than just the market’s supply-demand mechanism. Those at the helm should take this very seriously. Yes, prices must be controlled. But it’s far more important to check inefficiencies that skew the entire system.