Choice and Trade

I make few claims to be economically literate. Passing Stage I Economics in 1954 does not qualify me to make profound statements. I may regret aspects of globalisation but I feel its unstoppable.

Quite a while ago my mother rang up on the warpath. She’d been shopping and bought a new cardigan. The label said New Zealand wool. But when she got it home and checked she was disgusted to find it was made in China. She was in a good mind to take it back and get it changed for one made in New Zealand. I told her that’s just about impossible now; nearly all the clothes I was wearing were made elsewhere - Vietnam, Germany, Indonesia, China, only the old jersey and underwear were Kiwi. No wonder the country’s going to the dogs she declared.

In some ways I agree. At the end of the 19th century liberal Minister of Labour Pember Reeves was very proud of legislation which insisted that shop-girls be provided with a chair to sit on as part of their working conditions. That’s gone. One of our large supermarket chains was recently taken over by an Australian company. They’re insisting that our pork suppliers drop their prices to the same levels as their Australian counterparts. Otherwise they’ll import their pork from across the Tasman. Part of me says that’s neither sensible nor right. I am told I have more choice now. I wonder; especially for the majority of us. Butcher’s pork is nice but more expansive.

There are basically two foodmarket chains. Like the oil companies whose fuel price seems to rise and fall in lockstep fashion these two companies have little variation. Shopping around takes time, is more difficult for the elderly. Anyway I’ll enjoy Anne’s pork and tamarillo casserole tonight, a recipe I created years ago.

There’s nothing new in these concerns. When the Dutch conquered what is now Indonesia they tried to corner the world market for cloves by concentrating production of five small adjacent islands and cutting down clove trees galore on the other islands. Likewise they tried to create a monopoly for nutmeg by concentrating its production to the Banda Islands.