The Economics of a Commodity

The Economics of Commodities

As a preface to this blog entry, I have not yet read each of the essays in From Silver to Cocaine (though I hope to by the time class comes around tomorrow). However, so far from the entries I have read as I jump around the book reading the entries in the no particular order other than interest level, the one thing I find consistent is the economic aspects of the commodities being discussed. When the class first started I began to feel as if I was thinking about the commodities we were looking at from too much of a narrow economic focus and recently have been trying to view each of our weekly subjects from a broader perspective, however the economic angle is clear in many of these separate histories. The economics behind the production and trade of the select commodities drives the histories, and I feel that you could really pursue this angle with any of the commodities we’ve read about. Despite the different aspects that fuels the craving for the product, and the desire level having an impact on the production and trade process, whether it be spiritual, rituals, religious, or class related, you can technically still boil it down to supply and demand. With no demand, there is no point of producing something, and with no supply, eventually the demand will die out or be refocused on another product. We see these theories put to the test in several of the essays in From Silver to Cocaine. Be it through governments making a product illicit, like cocaine, or the product no longer serving the utilitarian purpose it once did, such as cochineal meeting it’s demise at the hands of new technological advances in synthetics, the market availability can control the demand. The power to control the economy, whether it be through direct government companies controlling production and/or trade, laws regarding the legality of a product, tariffs and taxes over products due to their value, or stigmatizing a product in relation to the morality of society, is ultimately how the commodity chains are controlled and the commodities rise and fall in value. It is easy to become pigeonholed in the viewpoint of economic aspects being the end all and be all of commodity histories, and it is important to see the social aspects as a primary cause at times, but I think that the economics behind the commodity will always having a controlling interest in the historical narrative.