Almost everyone complains about bad governance and how heartless our politicians are, but when you look at what the majority of us do in our own capacity, you'll be shocked and wonder who's more heartless, us or our leaders. I even had a friend who, annoyed by something, just looked at the situation of things in our country and spoke blatantly that we actually deserve the kind of leader we have. Without any atom of doubt, we all know for a fact that the rate at which various items are sold goes a long way in either making or marring a nation because of the effect on the people, and yet when we talk about the need for price control, a lot of people raise eyebrows on how such shouldn't even be considered because no one helped them with their businesses.
Understandably, price control can't work in a nation that's still struggling economically and that's dealing with inflation. Due to how volatile the market is, many marketers have to smarten up so as not to lose at the end of the day, but in a bid to accumulate wealth, a lot of business owners have so much hardened their hearts to a point where they don't care if the rate at which they hike their items affects the people or not. For a very long time we purchased things blindly because we didn't know how much they're sold for in top world countries and what it cost to ship them down here, but with recent events of the actual value of these things coming to light, in a bid to reduce the burden on Nigerians and expose most of these marketers for who they really are, some of us still find a way to condemn the person exposing the actual value of different items.
Some even said he's targeting some set of tribe business, and so he should keep quiet and focus on other things, and I can't help but shake my head, like, how did we get here? If every market sold with empathy, they wouldn't inflate the value of their items beyond the natural to the point where it seems exorbitant. Personally I think price control might not work because we all know how fragile our market is and how the price of things changes. But what I can say is that there should be a kind of law put in place that limits the percentage a business owner can gain from each item they sell; this would, in a way, reduce the way some people sell things for up to two or more times what they purchased them for.
If we can have a principle in place that says business owners can't have more than maybe ten or fifteen percent interest on the various items they sell, it'll go a long way in preventing this level of extortion we have going on in our society, and that's why neither the market nor the buyer trusts itself. You can imagine me following my mom to the market, and when she asked for the value of some items, she could be told it's 20,000, but after prolonged bargaining, you'll see the marketer accepting to sell those same items for as low as 8,000 or less, and trust me, for them to agree on that amount, it means they'll still have a gain, so what's the point of increasing it that much to fool the people? Because had a person who won't bargain been told the price, they'd sell it without feeling any guilt.
If you were to ask a business owner if the price of items should be regulated or not, you'll hear them say a resounding no, because they know how much it benefits them, but if you ask the people the same question, they'll say yes, it should be regulated, and I think when we have empathy for one another, there won't be a need to have such conversations. But at the end of the day, I'm of the opinion that market cap should be introduced for the good of everyone, because the same person who's selling items at outrageous prices, not minding how it affects the people, will wake up confidently one morning and say the government is heartless. Shouldn't such a person be ashamed, or do they need a mirror to see themselves for who they really are?
All photos are taken and edited on canva.