The Politics and Strategy of Bans!

Many leading personalities in my country are very good strategists, who understand the great potential of artificial scarcity has in accumulating wealth in a selective manner.

They understand the first principle of economics very well which states: 'Demand is inversely proportional to supplies'. Simply put, it means that the demand for any goods (or even services) is more when its supply is less. In other words, if something is in excess, it would be difficult to realize good money from it because its demand (and price) would be less.

Would You Like to Ban the Plants from Growing?

So, if supply is abundand, there would be some problem for the suppliers to make good money or wealth for them. So if supply is abundant either more demand has to be created or else the supply is artificially cut from the consumers for creating an apparently high demand. 

If tea production is less, some straight forward producers adopt the technique of marketting which involve in enhancing the tea consumption in consumers by various advertising techniques. But this method is time consuming and expensive.

But you can perhaps make more money by less production through artificial scarcity created by the modern marketing technology called the ' ban technique' which is widely used in developing nations such as my own India.

Ban technique is relatively simple. It uses democratic power of administration and the psychology of humans.

First about the psychology of humans. Human beings, both men, women and children are naturally bound to do some challenges before they acquire their desired possession of food, partner, toy, recreation, freedom and the like. If food is abundant, they do not feel like eating! If it is not available, they feel so hungry that they can do anything for it!

If a man or woman is free to move around, then they do not feel the importance of freedom. But if they were imprisoned, they are prepared to spend any amount to buy their freedom!

So the ban technique is essentially involved in preventing people from getting what they need.

So, if a high demand for tea is to be created, you can use the ban technique instead of other less effective marketing methods. What is done in this is to make the people who are involved in government or administration to promulgate a law or ordinance which bans the possession and consumption of tea by people. If any one is found to violate the law, various kinds of punishments are stipulated. 

If the people are found not taking the law seriously, the law enforcing authorities need to catch a few harmless violaters and punish them in accordance with the provisions of the law to make others scared of the new law.

When this is done, tea would become a banned item and people start feeling the desire for this item which is now scarce and illegal. Some fellows might even become so entrapped in their desire for drinking tea that they would now be willing to spend a fortune for it. The tea which used to sell for Rs.250/- a kg would now begin to sell for Rs.25000/- a kg! The producer would now make a killing by less production. The only thing that he has to do now is to share a good part of his huge profits to the ban enforcers!

Ofcourse, the ban equations need not be so clear and obvious. For bans to become effective, they need to be implemented cunningly and deceptively! The good thing here is that the ban supporters are normally very clever people with very good intelligence than the average common man. They know exactly what they are supposedly doing or have to do.

So some enlightened leaders of the people may advice the less developed folks about the reasons why they took the trouble to ban the sale of alcoholic liquors in a particular state or a region or country. Alcohol brews are very easy to produce. It could be produced in the homes of the ordinary people just as they make their normal foods. If it were so, these alcoholic drinks would not have been a charming thing for the people to spend money for getting it and consuming it. They would never have liked its obviously nauseating taste! They would not have liked the half poisoned state of their mind and bodies after consuming it!

But then the clever leaders have been doing the ban technique on it for centuries in various nations and regions of the world that people have developed the motive force of attraction to it because of its ban and undesirability forced upon them.

Same is the case with all kinds of bans. The more you ban, the more the motive force of desirability developing in the people affected by the ban.

You deny some thing to your child and your child will develop the curiosity and eagerness to go after it. The more you try to punish, them for their violating your ban rule, the more they get the impulse to violate. When you try to stop a natural flow, pressure builds up. That is the natural law. The build up of pressure can go to such heights that it could even burst to full destruction of the thing that prevented the natural flow!

The americans a few generations ago had been experimenting with the ban technique on various things. Many of them in the current generation are realizing the follies of their previous generations. The current move to liberalize marihuana (ganja) could be viewed as an example to this kind of drastic changes in thoughts.

If you want your child not to go after some food or drink or drug or other kind of  perceived sins, the wise way is not any forceful ban technique. Do not create the ban presssure on the child to instigate him or her to violate your diktat. The best and ideal way is not to project any negative clamour on any thing resulting it to gain some degree of sin value!

Just as it is applicable to the child, it is applicable to groups of people as well.

Clever fellows who are proponents of the ban technique are trying to enhance the so called sin value to otherwise normal things such as alcohol, beef, pork, porn, meat, drugs, coffee, tea, carbonated drinks, packed foods, plastics, books, ideas, and the like. By doing so, they are enhancing the marketability of such things in an indirect fashion making those otherwise non-desirable things as most desirable to many fellows who are possessed with a bit more adventure type characteristic deep in their minds.

Do not be under the impression that the ban proponents do their ban propaganda for your good. All propagandas are for gaining some benefits. Bans are promulgated by governments and governments of modern times act only when propagandists do their work with full force. And for creating that full force propaganda, money is required. That money comes from the beneficiaries who spin money from the bans.

But humans are not same in mind. Their minds have so many things in varying degrees. While some say yes, some others are bound to say no! All propaganda naturally generate counter propaganda! For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!

But then what should be done by us? Should we go with the ban proponents or the ban antagonists? 

My dear friend! Remember this universal law: Anything in excess is destructive poison. You have the freedom of choice. But your freedom should not harm my freedom or their freedom. While you live in this world, you should respect others who too are living in this world. How much and how best you proceed is well recorded in your mind itself. That is called human maturity and wisdom. 

But unfortunately, some humans do not have enough receptive power to tune to their own wisdom. Else they do not have the patience to do it. Some of them even forget that they are short lived humans and keep thinking that they are even greater than God!

What a pity!