December 26, 2013

Dear Sir,

It was with some amusement I read your report of 23 December in which Terry Lister suggested that Bermuda impose food price controls. I especially liked his suggestion that requires “all major stores to sign up to the price control system, and they would be expected (compelled) to charge the same price Island-wide.”

Although I have never counted goods for sale in a supermarket I understand that stores carry around 40,000 different items, and giant stores like Walmart stock about twice that. I am not sure how anyone, especially some government price commission, could handle controls affecting the pricing of 40,000 items in light of government experience at being unable to collect the fines for parking tickets. But perhaps I quibble.

Mr Lister, being the highly intelligent person he is, must be aware and in over 40 centuries (4,000 years) there has never been successful price control.

In Babylon, around 2000BC, the Code of Hammurabi imposed a rigid control of prices which led to its decline. On the other side of the world, in China, under the Chou dynasty price controls were a massive failure leading to revolution and poverty. Much the same could be said about Ancient India, the Roman Empire and Greece.

My own favourite from history is that, following the French Revolution, the chief price controller Robespierre had his head cut off by the guillotine.

If Mr Lister is aware of the massive failures of price controls, he must be holding himself out to be the most intelligent and successful financial brain in world history by overcoming the experience of 4,000 years.

If he is not aware of the historical facts, he must be one of the biggest fools in Christendom. The smart money, I suspect, must be on the F word

The best friend of a politician like Mr Lister is public ignorance of economics, or put more kindly the financial gullibility of the voter. The voter’s worst enemy is the politician, like Mr Lister, who takes advantage of the gullibility or economic ignorance of the voter.

Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with keeping in the saddle that they can’t bothered about where they go. My suggestion, to the guillotine.

Yours faithfully,

ROBERT STEWART.