A
Hungry Mob is an Angry Mob
by
John Maxwell
This article originally appeared in the Jamaica Observer.
"The
world financial system has pauperized middle and working class Americans in the
great housing scam and having created many surplus trillions, now seeks some
other prey to devour."
Very occasionally I'm asked why, when there is so much to
write about in Jamaica that I sometimes write about things outside. My answer
is always the same: Jamaica is a part of a larger world and much of what
happens here happens because of what happens outside.
As I write,
for instance, Jamaica is remarkably serene about the rapidly approaching food
crisis. The reason is simple. Most of us, including our media, don't expect to
be affected by famine and hunger and will, they think, be able to assume their
characteristic pose as spectators, unengaged,
viewing ‘dispassionately' the suffering and privations of others, less
fortunate.
At the
moment we are much more occupied with the question of writing a Charter of
Fundamental Rights and Freedoms for Yuppies. Shall we or shall we not change
the Constitution to enable those with more money than sense to hold dual
citizenship and allowing Americans and other foreigners to write laws for
Jamaicans as they were able to do when Roger Mais was jailed for
speaking his mind 64 years ago.
Meanwhile,
in the United States of America, the biggest wholesalers like Costco and Sam's
Club have begun to impose limits on the quantities of rice that anyone may buy
at any one time. While Sam's Club say they're not yet rationing oil or flour,
Costco is. Sam's Club is a subsidiary of Wal-Mart, the world's largest
corporation. In Lima, Peru, relief
food supplies are delivered to householders by night in order to avoid the
threat of hungry mobs capturing the scarce supplies.
Here, we
are cool, untroubled by global warming, sea level rise or the threat of famine.
"In Lima, Peru, relief food supplies are delivered to
householders by night in order to avoid the threat of hungry mobs."
Sea level
rise and global warming are both anthropogenic - caused by human activity - and
famine has historically been more the result of political decisions than of
crop failure. Today, American food producers and traders have besieged the
Commodities Futures Trading Commission which regulates US commodity markets.
According to capitalist theory, commodity markets and all other free market
institutions are essential components of the equitable management of world
trade, balancing supply and demand and performing a function so disinterested
that it can almost be considered a public service.
The father
of capitalist theory, Adam Smith, thought otherwise. While he extolled the
essential fairness of the "invisible hand" he decried the inherent greed and
self interest to which most businessmen were prone. According to Adam Smith:
"People of
the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the
conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to
raise prices." (The Wealth of Nations: Vol. 1, Book 1,
Chap 10)
Of course,
if I said that, or if Michael Manley or someone similar had said it, we would
immediately be accused of acute Communism and subversion of democracy. In
relation to this it may be interesting to quote something said 43 years ago, in
a debate at the university between economics lecturer, later professor R.B.
Davison and myself in June 1965.
According
to the Gleaner's report: "The intellectual is not the representative
of the people in the House of Representatives; he is the representative of all
the people in the West Indian islands, Mr. Maxwell said. He would be criminally
responsible if he allowed these people to starve when he was paid by them to
subvert the structures which kept them enslaved."
Among the
structures which keep ordinary people enslaved is the colossus of
globalization. We need to recover our autonomy. The world financial system has
pauperized middle and working class Americans in the great housing scam and
having created many surplus trillions, now seeks some other prey to devour.
"We need to recover our autonomy."
The food
supplies of the world is their new target.
According
to the Toronto Globe & Mail Thursday:
"Food producers lined up against investment fund managers during an
extraordinary meeting in Washington yesterday, saying they are partly to blame
for driving up food prices and playing havoc with commodity markets.
"Sixty
per cent of the current [wheat] market is owned by an index fund," said
Tom Coyle, of the National Grain and Feed Association. "Clearly that's
having an impact on the market."
What is an
index fund doing owning 60% of the world's wheat trade? According to Tom Buis,
National Farmers Union "...[W]e've got a train wreck coming that's going
to be greater than anything we've ever seen in agriculture."
Rice has
almost doubled in price in two months, wheat has gone up 120% in a year and
both will go higher if speculators play true to form.
In the International Herald Tribune, economist
William Pfaff, says "Speculative
purchases have no other purpose than to make money for the speculators, who
hold their contracts to drive up current prices with the intention ... of
unloading their holdings onto an artificially inflated market, at the expense
of the ultimate consumer. Even the general public can now play the speculative
game; most banks offer investment funds specializing in metals, oil and, more
recently, food products."
Pfaff -
like millions of less well educated people, cannot understand why this
wickedness is allowed to continue: "It is astonishing in the present situation
that the international financial institutions and government regulators have
done little to control or banish this parasitical and antisocial practice. The
myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all
contrary evidence."
"Speculative purchases
have no other purpose than to make money for the speculators."
Meanwhile,
here in Paradise, we will stay cool, as we import new problems with
mammoth people-processing
factory-hotels fencing us off from our Caribbean Sea, happy to service the
unscrupulous and law-defying local subagents of the international casino called
globalization.
And, as we degrade our land for shrimp farms and
slave to produce and process pond shrimp, it should give us no end of joy to
know that the American Purina Corporation is a huge market for farmed shrimp. They use it for dog food.
Are we having fun yet, Daddy?
John Maxwell of the University of the West Indies (UWI) is the
veteran Jamaican journalist who in 1999 single-handedly thwarted the Jamaican
government's efforts to build houses at Hope, the nation's oldest and best
known botanical gardens. His campaigning earned him first prize in the 2000
Sandals Resort's Annual Environmental Journalism Competition, the region's
richest journalism prize. He is also the author of How to Make Our Own News: A
Primer for Environmentalists and Journalists. Jamaica, 2000. Mr. Maxwell can be
reached at jankunnu@gmail.com.
Copyright©2008
John Maxwell
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