The Rural Voice, 1989-11, Page 16rd irohdldldld
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14 THE RURAL VOICE
THE EMOTIONAL
MARKETPLACE
Keith Roulston, a newspaper publisher
and playwright who lives near Blyth,
is the originator and past publisher of
The Rural Voice.
The economic ideology of the
marketplace so dominates all aspects
of the public debate these days that
even the silliest of its watchwords
seem to be accepted as fact.
One of the benefits of the market-
place, according to supporters of cap-
italist ideology, is that the market has
no emotion: that all market decisions
are logical. The free market is better
than government involvement, they
say, because the unsentimental market
will seek out winners, while govern-
ment will prop up the losers to prevent
criticism. The same argument is used
whenever Canadians worry about how
much of their country is controlled by
foreign investors. Money, we're told,
knows no boundaries. Ha!
This kind of right-wing dogma
goes back to elementary economics.
I remember in the first week or so of
my college economic course when
they started to teach us the basics. If,
they said, store A sells butter for 50
cents a pound (that'll show you how
long ago I was in school), and store B
across the street sells it for 49 cents a
pound, the customer will cross the
street to buy the cheaper butter.
I was about as cantankerous then
as I am now, so I couldn't agree.
Maybe the street was busy and the
person would rather pay the extra than
cross it, I thought. Maybe the other
side of the street was in the sun on a
hot day. Maybe the guy with the more
expensive butter was a family friend.
Or maybe, as is likely the case today,
the guy with the expensive butter had
spent so much money on advertising
that he had brainwashed the customer
into thinking his butter so special that,
even at a higher cost, it was a bargain.
With Robert Campeau's economic
woes making the news lately, Peter C.
Newman recalled in his column in
Maclean's the first time Campeau had
suffered a major rebuff. It was back in
1977, and the upstart French Canadian
from Sudbury who had built his for-
tune through real estate development
made a surprise bid for Royal Trustco,
Canada's largest trust company. It
was also a company controlled by old
English Canadian bluebloods, who
were horror-stricken at the idea of this
guy taking over their business.
The managers called in their old
friends from the establishment. A
competing bid was put in, higher than
the bid Campeau had put in: in fact,
higher than the company proved to be
worth. After the infidel had been
warded off, the new owners found
they had actually lost money on the
purchase — not the managers who
made the decision to buy, mind you,
but the shareholders of the companies
that did the buying. The buyers, how-
ever, were brought before a hearing of
the Ontario Securities Commission
and punished for their actions. So
much for the logic of the market.
As for money knowing no borders,
how many times has the patriotism of
American businessmen led them to use
their corporate connections to advance
the American vision of the way the
world should be. American media
tycoons like Henry Luce, owner of
Time Inc., believed it was their
mission not only to make money, but
to make the rest of us see the Amer-
ican way was the right way. Wave the
flag in the U.S. and you're likely to
see many of the corporate elite lined
up in marching order behind it.
Emotion has a lot to do with
money and always has. Fear and
greed drive the stock and commodity
markets. Money itself may not be
emotional, but people who have it are.
When money, and the power it
gives, is spread out, the emotion of
one faction can be counteracted by
another. But when we concentrate too
much power in a few hands, no matter
how rational these people claim to be,
we're asking for trouble.°