'The Market Made Me Do It'

 January 2001

It has become a popular truism that our public, community, and individual economic affairs are dictated by unchangeable market forces.  The current discussions about natural gas prices are an example. In the past year Canadian natural gas prices have doubled and are expected to increase further.  This follows a similar increase in oil prices.  Commentaries assume that this is a natural consequence of market forces of supply and demand. But what does this really mean?

There has not been any significant rise in the cost of production.  Historically the price of natural gas was substantially lower than most other forms of energy and, as a clean burning fuel, industrial users and consumers were encouraged to convert to natural gas.  This was the case largely because natural gas had to be transported by pipeline and existing pipelines were oriented to the Canadian market, limiting where the gas could be sold.

However under the North American Free Trade Agreement, gas producers in the west and east have constructed additional pipelines to the United States.  As a result they can now supply gas to both the Canadian and American markets.  The producers have used transportation and NAFTA to convert a Canadian resource into a continental resource.  As a result, natural gas prices now rise with world energy prices.

Gas producers and their spin doctors are now justifying the increased prices because of the economic ‘law’ of supply and demand.  This gives them the right to the profit without significant increase in costs while all Canadians pay for the increased prices: we all need heat, industry needs energy, and farmers need fertilizer.  Publicly there is little, if any, mention of the windfall profits being received by gas producers at the public’s cost through their having manipulated the market.

But there is a further factor involved here.  In Canada we have a policy which gives gas producers private ownership of gas resources. (The name ‘gas producers’ is indicative of how these industrial leaders view themselves as supplanting the Creator – the gas was given to us by the Creator.  All the industry is doing is tapping the resource and distributing it.)  This private ownership converts what is a natural resource given by the Creator for the use of the whole creation and present and future generations, into a privately owned commodity whose value (price) is set by the market.  Now when the owners have manipulated the market price to generate huge profits at the expense of the public, their justification is that the ‘market made me do it’.

Although such actions are immoral, they are not viewed as such because they are just an extreme reflection of how we accept the market as determining the economic conditions of daily life.  People’s work and to a large extent their personal value is determined by what that work is valued in the labour market.  A person who has been given the gift of leadership is valued at $100,000+ per year; a person who has the gift of caring for children is valued from $0 to $20,000 per year.  When we have the opportunity, we also manipulate the market to our advantage over others.  Our houses are market commodities whose value increases for us at the expense of our children and others who have to purchase their housing at the increased prices.  Those who can’t are left out and join the hundreds of thousands who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.  We don’t see the moral connections because we have accepted that we deserve the benefit because the ‘market gives it to us’.

Over the past few decades we have moved into a new realm in which we actively participate in the market to increase our financial advantages.  Through mutual funds and registered retirement savings plans we exert our faith in the market to bring us security.  We make no connection to the hundreds of millions of people whose lives are devastated daily by these same market forces and, in fact, we eagerly follow the advice of the financial planners (market priests) who tell us to  invest ethically in the stock of energy companies!

We have moved a long way from the ethic that sees the earth as being created for the benefit of all humankind, that sees anything I have beyond what I need as belonging to my fellow humans who do not have enough, that seeks to follow the vision put forward in the Sermon on the Mount, and that follows in the path of the new testament Christians who held everything in common for the benefit of all.