Market Economy

Warning: this post has nothing to do with market economies.

Gillian and I took a trip down to the Kitchener Market this weekend.  I haven't been in almost a year, and every time I go down to King St. I feel the same rush of emotions.  I love the smells, the business, the old world feel of people talking to vendors, laughing over the weather or arguing over prices.  It seems so medieval for us all to pack into a small space to buy everything you need for the week.

After buying a nice cup of coffee and a scone, Gillian and decide to sit on what we believe was a large statue representing a pea (in a pod).  Being in the market made me reflective: food does that to me.  It occurred to me that in all the madness and panic surrounding the current economy, we may have missed the boat on what the market is really supposed to be.  The "market" as in the big, open spectrum of products competing for your dollars isn't the really the point of a market.  Its the intersection of lives, the connection between people.  It made feel like spending more money, know that it was going to people, their livelihoods and their families.  What if all good were sold this way?  What if everything you bought had  a face, a story and life connected to it?  The sad state of the world is that there is a connection to people in most of what we buy, just not a good one.  Large corporations make the most of the work of simple laborers.

It made me realize that maybe markets are the best thing we could do to solve the Market issue.  What if each community went back to purchasing the majority of their goods (not all) from people they knew.  Maybe we'd need to suck it up and if we wanted something that was only available in Toronto or New York, we had to go there ourselves.

Sorry, so I guess this was all about market economies.  My bad.

Comments

[Kristen Cober]

?

Je ne comprende pas!

[Eric]

Interesting questions. As with most things, my gut reaction is that the solution is somewhere in the middle... If not, you might want to stop driving, for instance. Though, moving that direction might not be too bad an idea....

[Eric]

PS - you should write more articles about the market economy so that I have something to read/comment on!