Broken Window Fallacy

PM Modi, Nehruvian Economic Policies Aren’t Going to Get Us Anywhere

narendra_modi
This is something that we should have written on a while back, but as they say it is better late than never.

In the annual budget of the government of India, presented earlier this month, the finance minister Arun Jaitley raised custom duties on a whole host of products. In his speech, Jaitley made it clear that this wasn’t a one-off thing, but a change in policy direction.

As he said: “In this budget, I am making a calibrated departure from the underlying policy in the last two decades, wherein the trend largely was to reduce the customs duty. There is substantial potential for domestic value addition in certain sectors, like food processing, electronics, auto components, footwear and furniture. To further incentivise the domestic value addition and Make in India in some such sectors, I propose to increase customs duty on certain items. I propose to increase customs duty on mobile phones from 15% to 20%, on some of their parts and accessories to 15% and on certain parts of TVs to 15%. This measure will promote creation of more jobs in the country.”

The customs duty has been raised on around 45 products. The maximum increase was in case of cranberry juice from 10% to 50%. (All you cranberry juice drinkers out there, maybe it is time to start appreciating the taste of chilled filtered water with a dash of lemon in it).

The idea as Jaitley explained is to create jobs within the country. With increased custom duties, imported goods will become expensive. This will make domestic goods competitive. As people buy more and more of domestic goods, the companies producing goods in India will do well. Once they do well, they will expand and create jobs in the process. Alternatively, because imports will become uncompetitive, the domestic companies can continue operating, and jobs can thus be saved. QED.

The problem with this argument is that it stinks of Nehruvian era economic policies, in particular import substitution, which was the norm in independent India, up until the economic reforms of 1991. Import substitution as a policy was introduced by Jawahar Lal Nehru and carried forward by Indira Gandhi, two individuals, the Bhartiya Janata Party keeps blaming for everything that is wrong in this country (even though we are four years into the term). At its simplest level, import substitution is basically an economic policy which promotes domestic production at the cost of imports. And it is an economic policy, which doesn’t work.

As the French economist Jean Tirole writes in Economics for the Common Good: “In economic matters too, first impressions can mislead us. We look at the direct effect of an economic policy, which is easy to understand, and we stop there. Most of the time we are not aware of the indirect effects. We do not understand the problem in its entirety. Yet secondary or indirect effects can easily make a well-intentioned policy toxic.”

What does Tirole mean here? Another French economist Frédéric Bastiat explains what secondary or indirect effects are, through the broken window fallacy.

Bastiat basically talks about a shopkeeper’s careless son breaking a pane of a glass window. He then goes on to say that those present would say: “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of glaziers if panes of glass were never broken.”

The point being that if windows weren’t broken, how would those repairing windows, the glaziers that is, ever make a living. This seems like a fair question to ask, but things aren’t as simple as that.

As Bastiat writes in Essays on Political Economy: “This form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.”

Bastiat then goes on to explain what exactly he means by this. Let’s say replacing the pane of the broken window costs 6 francs. This is the amount that the shopkeeper pays the glazier. If the shopkeeper’s son would not have broken the window there was no way that the glazier could have earned these six francs.

As Bastiat puts it: “The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.” This leads us to conclude that breaking windows is a good thing because it leads to money circulating and those who repair broken windows doing well in the process.

Nevertheless, this is just one side of the argument. As Bastiat writes: “It is not seen that our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps have replaced his old shoes, or added a book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident prevented.”

How does this apply in the case of the Narendra Modi government increasing custom duties on a whole host of products? The seen effect of this, as already explained above, is that domestic Indian companies can compete with cheaper imports because of the custom duties being increased. This is likely to create jobs and if not, it is at least likely to save jobs. This is the first order effect or the seen effect.

What is the second order effect or the unseen effect? It is well worth remembering here that consumers only have so much money to spend. If cheaper imports no longer remain cheaper because of an increase in custom duties, the consumers have to pay a higher price for the goods made by domestic companies. Once this happens, they are likely to cut their spending on some other front.

The trouble is that this some other front on which consumers cut their spending, is not easily identifiable. Once consumers cut their spending on other fronts, some domestic businesses are not going to do well, and jobs will be lost there. The trouble is this is not something which is very obvious. It is an unseen effect.

If the consumers keep spending the same amount of money as before, they will end up cutting down on their savings, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. As Henry Hazlitt writes in Economics in One Lesson: “The fallacy… comes from noticing only the results that are immediately seen, and neglecting the results that are not seen.”

Another point that needs to be made here is that the domestic companies are organised well enough to lobby with the government. The end consumer never is.

Increasing customs duties is not a solution to creating jobs. For jobs to be created Indian firms need to be globally competitive. When companies produce for the global market, they need to compete with the best in the world. This automatically leads to a situation wherein the products which a company produces need to be globally competitive. On the other hand, when import substitution is the norm and companies need to produce just for the internal market, almost anything goes. This explains why the Indian corporate sector on the whole, has not been able to be competitive on the global front. It has still not been able to come out of the import substitution era. (We hope people do remember the Ambassador Car which had the same engine between 1944 and 1982.)

In order to be globally competitive, India needs to introduce a whole host of reforms, from labour law reforms to land reforms. It needs to start pricing electricity correctly. The governments need to control their fiscal deficits to ensure that they don’t push up interest rates in the long-term. Our education system needs a paradigm shift (We find this phrase absolutely cringeworthy, but nothing explains the situation better). The corporate bond market needs to function much better than it currently is. The number of inspectors that an average business needs to deal with has to come down. The paper work needs to be simplified. All these distortions in the system need to go.

Long story short—going back to Nehruvian economics is not going to do any good to the country. The sooner Narendra Modi understands this, the better it will be for India. India has suffered enough because of the mess initiated by the economic policies of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. And there is no point, going back to it.

The column originally appeared in Equitymaster on February 19, 2018.

Is the 26 Week Maternity Benefit Really a Benefit?

Last week, the Parliament passed the Maternity Benefit Bill. Once the President gives his assent to the Bill and it becomes an Act, women will be entitled to a maternity leave of 26 weeks. Currently, it stands at 12 weeks.

The new law will apply to organisations employing 10 or more people. It will be available only for the first two children. Beyond that the leave will be limited to 12 weeks. The prime minister Narendra Modi called it “a landmark moment in our efforts towards women-led development”. The labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said the new Bill was his humble gift to women.

Nevertheless, the question is, is this really a gift to women? Before I answer this, let’s try and understand a concept called the broken window fallacy. This concept was put forward by the nineteenth century French economist Frédéric Bastiat.

Bastiat basically talks about a shopkeeper’s careless son breaking a pane of a glass window. He then goes on to say that those present would say: “It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of glaziers if panes of glass were never broken.”

The point being that if windows weren’t broken, how would those repairing windows, the glaziers that is, ever make a living. This seems like a fair question to ask, but things aren’t as simple as that.

As Bastiat writes in Essays on Political Economy: “This form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.”

Bastiat then goes on to explain what exactly does he mean by this. Let’s say replacing the pane of the broken window costs 6 francs. This is the amount that the shopkeeper pays the glazier. If the shopkeeper’s son would not have broken the window there was no way that the glazier could have earned these six francs.

As Bastiat puts it: “The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.” This leads us to conclude that breaking windows is a good thing because it leads to money circulating and those who repair broken windows doing well in the process.

Nevertheless, this is just one side of the argument. As Bastiat writes: “It is not seen that our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps have replaced his old shoes, or added a book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident prevented.”

Now how does all this apply in case of the 26-week maternity benefit? Like the above case, there is a seen part to the benefit and an unseen part. The seen part of the benefit is very obvious. Women currently working in establishments with 10 or more people will get a 26 week maternity benefit during pregnancy. Of course, it is more than likely that this benefit will be limited to the organised sector. It is unlikely to benefit women working in the unorganised sector, which forms a bulk of the lot.

Further, this seen part comes with a cost attached to it. Small and big establishments will have to pay an employee for half a year her full salary, when she is not available at work. While, the big establishments will be able to manage this, the small ones won’t. Hence, the likely unseen impact of this is going to lead to managers not hiring women of child bearing age.

A newsreport in The Guardian points out: “A survey of 500 managers by law firm Slater & Gordon showed that more than 40% admitted they are generally wary of hiring a woman of childbearing age, while a similar number would be wary of hiring a woman who has already had a child or hiring a mother for a senior role.” This evidence is from the United Kingdom. Along similar lines, increasing the maternity benefit to 26 weeks is going to ensure that Indian managers will work along similar lines, not that they don’t already.

This is not to suggest that women should not be entitled to an extended leave post child-birth. Nevertheless, it is only fair to keep in mind that perfect is the enemy of good. The male-female ratio in most of corporate India is anyway lopsided to begin with. As an October 2015 report in The Economic Times points out: “The fairer sex comprises less than 2% of the workforce of marquee companies like Adani Ports, Bajaj Auto, Grasim, UltraTech and Hero MotoCorp.”  The 26-week maternity benefit is likely to make it worse and that is clearly not a good thing.

Further, this is in line with the Indian tendency to implement welfare measures much ahead of economic growth.

The other unseen impact of this move is that with a 26-week maternity leave, the mother is likely to become even more of a primary caregiver to the child, during the initial days. Hence, to that extent the extension of maternity benefit is patriarchal in nature. And that possibly cannot be a good thing.

The column originally appeared on Pragati.com on March 14, 2017

Broken Window Fallacy: What Falling Vegetable Prices Tell Us About Notebandi

broken-windows

The negative effects of demonetisation have now reached a stage wherein there is enough data available to discuss the concept of the broken window fallacy. This fallacy explains beautifully the ill-effects of demonetisation or notebandi in a very simple and straightforward way.

The French economist Frédéric Bastiat discusses this fallacy in his 1874 book That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen. He talks about the anger of a good shopkeeper whose careless son has happened to break a pane of a glass window.

As Basitat writes: “If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation-“It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

The point being if window glasses were never broken what would glaziers ever do? A glazier is essentially person who fits glass into windows and doors. Without broken window glasses, there would be almost no work for glaziers.

As Basitat writes: “Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade-that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs-I grant it, I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.”

But what about that which is not seen? “It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident has prevented,” writes Bastiat.

So how does all this apply to demonetisation? The phrases to mark in the above paragraphs are that which is seen and that which is not seen. As economist Jim Walker of Asianomics put it in a recent research note: “It is likely that the demonetisation exercise will throw up very little, and certainly transient, weaknesses in measurements of the formal economy. It will be claimed, because it can be seen, that the pain was small and transient.”

This is clearly seen in the post demonetisation revised GDP estimates (or to put it simply economic growth estimates). Most economists have cut their economic growth estimates by less than 100 basis points. One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage.

Take the case of the National Council of Applied Economic Research. It recently cut the Indian economic growth forecast by 70 basis points to 6.9 per cent. Earlier it had forecast an economic growth of 7.6 per cent for 2016-2017.

Or take the case of Moody’s Investors Service. It recently cut the Indian economic growth forecast by 40 basis points to 7.1 per cent, from the earlier 7.5 per cent. The Reserve Bank of India has cut the growth forecast by 70 basis points to 6.9 per cent, from the earlier 7.6 per cent.

Hence, India is widely expected to grow by around 7 per cent in the current financial year. Before demonetisation was announced, it was expected to grow by around 7.6 per cent. Hence, that is a drop of around 60 basis points. Given this small fall, those in favour of demonetisation will claim that the negative impact of demonetisation hasn’t been much.

But this is what Bastiat called that which can be seen. The problem is with the unseen part, which is India’s huge informal economy. As Walker puts it: “Since by definition it is not measured, the detrimental and potentially lasting effects on the informal economy are impossible to observe, precisely because it is not measured.”

This is a point I have made in few of my recent columns. (You can read them here and here). This point is made in the latest Economic Survey as well, a document published by the ministry of finance. As the Survey pointed out: “It is clear that recorded GDP growth in the second half of FY2017 [October 2016 to March 2017] will understate the overall impact because the most affected parts of the economy-informal and cash based-are either not captured in the national income accounts [basically the gross domestic product].”

Hence, a large part of the damage because of demonetisation will remain unseen. This will happen because of two reasons, one because a lot of it will remain unmeasured and two, because a lot of it won’t make it to the national media, which primarily operates out of New Delhi.

Take the case of vegetable prices. Take a look at Figure 1. It shows the vegetable price inflation since November 2015, using the wholesale price index (WPI) data.

Figure 1:
As is clear from Figure 1, the vegetable price inflation was at around 28.5 per cent in July 2016. Since then it has been falling and has been in negative territory since September 2016, with a major fall coming in after demonetisation in November 2016. In December 2016, wholesale vegetable prices fell by a third in comparison to a year earlier. In January 2017, the situation continued.

This damage has primarily happened because the vegetable supply chain in the country works primarily on cash. As analysts Ritika Mankar Mukherjee and Sumit Shekhar of Ambit Capital write in a research note: “The core theme which was discernible across India was that the prices of perishables, such as vegetable, have crashed as farmers are unable to sell their produce as their supply chains are entirely cash driven. For instance, cauliflower and pea farmers in a village in Haryana (near Panipat) told us that they had to trash their produce entirely as there were no buyers.”

With not enough cash going around, transactions for buying and selling of vegetables could not be carried out in the same volume as was the case before notebandi. This has led to a situation where the farmers have had to trash their produce. This is the unseen damage of demonetisation that will never be talked about.

Also, this damage will have a multiplier effect. Given that farmers producing vegetables are ending up with a lot of waste despite a bumper crop, it means that they will not earn as much money as they were hoping to. This will have an impact on their consumption as well. As I had written sometime back, two-wheeler sales have already crashed big time.

The analysts also add: “Whilst farmers were confident that as the cash comes back into the system the situation will improve, they lamented about the fact that the bumper vegetable season was destroyed because of demonetisation.”

How soon the situation improves is not unseen, but it remains to be seen.

The column originally appeared on Equitymaster on February 28, 2017

Beedis are fine, but smoking cigarettes stick by stick is injurious to health

beedisNews-reports suggest that the government is planning to ban the sale of loose cigarettes. Sagarika Mukherjee an analyst with SBI Caps points out that 70% of the cigarettes sold in India are sold loose.
Further, a November 26 news-eport in the Mumbai Mirror says “The union health ministry on Tuesday recommended a ban on the sale of unpackaged cigarettes to deter smokers from graduating to buying full packs.”
The health minister JP Nadda said in the Rajya Sabha on November 25 that the ministry had accepted the recommendations of a seven member committee on the “prohibition on sale of loose or single stick of cigarette, increasing the minimum legal age for sale of tobacco products, increasing the fine or penalty amounts for violation of certain provisions of the Act as well as making such offences cognizable”.
On the face of it this seems to be a good decision. We all know that cigarette smoking is injurious to health. Nevertheless, before the sale of loose cigarettes is actually banned there are several other points that need to be taken into account.
Governments normally tend to see what is only immediately obvious and ignore the secondary consequences. The economist Henry Hazlitt calls this the broken window fallacy. He explains this through an example in his book Economics in One Lesson.
A young hoodlum throws a stone at a shop’s window and breaks it. By the time the shopkeeper realises what has happened and comes out of the shop, the boy has already escaped. As often happens in these cases, a crowd gathers around, first trying to figure out what has happened and then offers its own analysis on the scenario. In sometime, the crowd decides rather philosophically that what happened was for the good.
As Hazlitt writes “After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection…It will make business for some glazier….After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business?”
With the shopkeeper now having to repair the window, the glazier would earn more money. He would thus have more money to spend and would spend it in the days to come. And this would benefit other businessmen. “The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be…that the little hoodlum who threw the stone, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor,” writes Hazlitt.
All this sounds very straightforward. But what it does not take into account is the fact that the shopkeeper would have to spend money in order to get the window repaired. And he may have earmarked to spend the money on something else.
In Hazlitt’s example, the shopkeeper wanted to buy a suit. Now that he has to spend money on getting the window repaired, he would have no money to buy a suit. As Hazlitt writes “The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, [the shopkeeper] and the glazer. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor [who would have made the suit]. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye…It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”
Many government decisions are plagued with the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences. The recommendation to ban the sale of loose cigarettes also overlooks several secondary consequences. Also, it stinks of hypocrisy and is the kind of micromanaging which governments should be avoiding.
Typically, most people who buy loose cigarettes are ones who cannot afford to buy a packet at one go. If loose cigarettes are banned will these people stop smoking? Most likely not. They will either save up and buy a packet every few days.
Or they will simply move on to a cheaper substitute, which in this case would be beedis. Beedis because they do not have a filter are a bigger health hazard than cigarettes with filters are. And chances are the government will end up spending more money in trying to cure tobacco related illnesses, in the years to come.
Further, the question is how will the government implement such a ban? Cigarettes aren’t exactly sold through a few big stores around the country which can be monitored. They are sold by millions of paan wallahs through the length and the breadth of the country. Mukherjee of SBI Caps puts the number of shops selling cigarettes from anywhere between seven to eight million.
I used to live in Hyderabad in the early 2000s, when the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh government decided to ban gutka. All that happened was that the paan wallahs stopped displaying gutka packets in the open and started keeping them in their pockets.
Further, they even demanded a premium to the maximum retail price. The police was suitably bribed to look the other way. Gutka which was freely available in states around Andhra Pradesh continued to be smuggled in.
Another logic offered in support of not allowing the sale of single sticks is that when a packet is sold, it contains graphic images showing the ill-effects of smoking. When loose cigarettes are sold, individuals buying those cigarettes don’t see those graphic images. Hence, sale of loose cigarettes should not be allowed.
Other countries in Asia have banned the sale of loose cigarettes using the logic explained above. So, the cigarette companies there simply moved to producing smaller packets. The committee whose recommendations the health ministry has accepted has already recommended that smaller packets should not be allowed. But this is where you start to discriminate between those who can afford to buy a cigarette pack and those who can’t.
Mukherjee of SBI Caps points out that only 12% of the tobacco consumption in the country happens through cigarettes. And cigarette companies contribute a major portion of the excise duty and other taxes collected from the tobacco industry. So, if the government is serious about tackling tobacco consumption why not look where the real problem is? Attacking the beedi sector will be a difficult thing to do, given that the beedi barons are politically very well connected.
Another thing that needs to be pointed out here is that the government of India owns around one third of ITC, a company which controls 80% of the Indian tobacco market. The Life Insurance Corporation of India owns 14.5% stake, followed by the Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (SU-UTII) which owns 11.25% and the four general insurance companies together own 6.78% in the tobacco major.
This stake of LIC, SU-UTI and the four general insurance companies, in ITC, as on November 26, 2014, was worth a whopping Rs 94,241 crore. The actual stake of the government will be worth much more once one takes into account the holdings of government owned mutual funds as well.
If the government is serious about discouraging tobacco consumption, the first thing it needs to do is sell its stake in ITC and then take it on from there. This money could be put to good use by helping specialized cancer hospitals in the country to expand their infrastructure or to even set up new ones. Then there is also the case of the government subsidizing fertilizers, a portion of which goes into tobacco farming as well.
The beedi industry does not face the same kind of taxes that the cigarette industry does. Why not do away with that anomaly? In a recent column Swaminathan Aiyar talks about a column he wrote in 2009. At that point time Indians consumed around one trillion beedis per year against 106 billion cigarettes. If the taxes on beedis and nonfilter cigarettes were equalized it would have yielded an additional revenue of Rs 15,000 crore per year, back then. If taxes on beedis were equalised to the level of tax on a standard filter cigarette, it would have yielded an additional tax of Rs 80,000 crore per year. If such a tax is implemented now, the numbers will be higher.
What all this clearly tells us is that targeting just loose cigarettes doesn’t make any sense. If tobacco consumption is to be brought down, it needs a more holistic solution than what is being currently offered. The current government like most governments before it has fallen victim to the broken window fallacy.

Disclosure: I do not smoke. And I would like to thank PV Subramanyan for explaining several points that I made in this piece.

The article appeared originally on www.equitymaster.com on Nov 27, 2014

A bit rich: Why is discount king Kishore Biyani ranting against Flipkart sale?

Kishore_Biyani
Vivek Kaul

If you shout loud enough someone is bound to hear.
Over the last couple of days the offline retail players led by the likes of Kishore Biyani have been shouting from the rooftops about Flipkart and othe retail players indulging in predatory pricing and selling products below cost.
As a very patriotic sounding Biyani told The Economic Times “How can someone sell products below its manufacturing price? This is legally not allowed in the country. Someone can do such undercutting only to destroy competition. Just because they have foreign funding, they can’t kill local trade like that.”
He hasn’t been the only one whining against the discounts offered by the ecommerce companies like Flipkart. Praveen Khandelwal of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said that the association has already approached the Ministry of Commerce. “We do not understand how online retailers gave 60-70% discounts. The prices at which they sold merchandise are lower than our purchase prices. This is a clear case of predatory pricing.”
These noises have reached the government. “We have received many inputs regarding Flipkart episode. Lot of concern have been expressed and we will look into it. Now there are many complaints. We will study the matter… Whether there is a need for a separate policy or some kind of clarification is needed, we will make it clear soon” Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said yesterday.
The first question is why should the government look into what is basically finally some healthy competition in the retail sector. Henry Hazlitt explains this beautifully in his book Economics in One Lesson. As he writes “The persistent tendency of men [is] to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups.”
The offline retailers have managed to attract the attention of the government and now the government wants to look into the matter of discounts offered by ecommerce companies. Chances are that the government in the process of looking into the matter will fall victim to what Hazlitt calls the broken window fallacy.
So what exactly is the broken window fallacy? Hazlitt explains this through an example. A young hoodlum throws a stone and breaks a shop window. By the time the shopkeeper comes out, the boy has manage to disappear. A crowd starts to gather and a discussion starts. In sometime, the crowd decides rather philosophically that what happened was for the good.
As Hazlitt writes “After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection…It will make business for some glazier….After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business?” The glazier will have more money to spend. And this will benefit other merchants. “The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be…that the little hoodlum who threw the stone, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor,” writes Hazlitt.
On the face of it this sounds perfectly normal. But what it does not take into account is the fact that the shopkeeper will have to spend money in order to get the window repaired. And this money he could have spent on something else. In the example that Hazlitt has in his book the shopkeeper wanted to buy a suit. Now he can’t possibly buy the suit because the money has been spent on getting the window repaired.
As Hazlitt writes “The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, [the shopkeeper] and the glazer. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor [who would have made the suit]. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye…It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”
A similar thing seems to be playing out now in the battle between the ecommerce companies and the offline retailers. In the process the government, like the crowd in Hazlitt’s example, is likely to forget about the third party in the transaction i.e. the end consumer.
As I had explained in a piece yesterday, the end consumer has benefited from the discounts on offer by the ecommerce companies. While, there may have been problems with Flipkart’s recent Big Billion Day Sale, the discounts on offer on most days are genuine. And this benefits the consumers.
Ecommerce companies can offer these discounts because they do not require to maintain the massive physical infrastructure that offline retailers need to do. Over and above this, they do not need to maintain massive physical inventory and at the same time can cut through the distribution chain. These things help keep costs low, which in turn leads to discounts.
The end consumer benefits through discounts. He also now has more choice. Take the case of books. I am a big fan of crime fiction in general and Scandinavian crime fiction (translated into English) in particular. I can now buy almost all the Scandinavian crime fiction that has been translated into English from websites selling books. At the same time the choice of crime fiction available at a book store is fairly limited.
Let’s take another example shared by a friend who lives in a small town and has recently had a baby. The supply of quality diapers in his town is rather patchy. He now simply orders them online.
Further, the consumer also has more choice now when it comes to spending his money. If a consumer buys a product that costs Rs 1,000 offline at Rs 800 online, he is left with Rs 200. That money he can spend somewhere else. This will also benefit some business at the end of the day. The trouble of course is that no one knows where the consumer will end up spending the Rs 200 that he saves by buying online. Hence, a coherent argument in favour of the consumer cannot be made.
So, the likes of Biyani and his ilk may be complaining but the end consumer has benefited from the ecommerce revolution that is taking place. Another argument being offered is that ecommerce companies are taking over the business of offline retailers. As a retailer told The Hindu Business Line “The consuming class in India is in the age group of 18-30. Incidentally, they are also the ones who are driving up sales in the online space. This may erode our customer base.”
The next level of this argument will be that if this continues, then the offline retailers will have to start firing people. Hence, many people will end up losing jobs. The problem with this argument is that it again does not take the consumer into account.
Take the case of mobile phone retailers who are facing a tough time because of the discounts offered on mobile phones by ecommerce companies. The question is how many mobile phone consumers does this country have in comparison to mobile phone retailers. The number of mobile phone users is many many times the number of mobile phone retailers. So yes, mobile phone retailers are having a tough time, but the mobile phone users are benefiting (or have the potential to benefit) from the discounts being offered by the ecommerce companies and this cannot be ignored.
Further, the offline retailers have accused ecommerce companies of dumping their goods as well as predatory pricing. Sunil Jain demolishes these arguments in today’s edition of The Financial Express.
The question that Jain asks is that does Flipkart have the market power to dump goods? The entire e-retail sector in this country is selling goods worth around $4 billion, as per data from consulting firm Technopack. This is not even 1% of the $500 billion consumer market. And Flipkart is a fraction of that 1%. So, it doesn’t really have the market power to dump goods?
Further, Flipkart and other websites have been accused to selling things below cost. As Jain writes “Biyani and the others making this case will have to prove it. Just because a sale is taking place below the maximum retail price (MRP) doesn’t make it below-cost. Let’s say an article costs Rs 100 but has an MRP of Rs 200—that’s a pretty standard thing for most goods. The difference between the two is what comprises trade margins, shared between wholesalers and retailers. So as long as Flipkart is selling at over Rs 100, it is difficult to make a case for it selling below-cost—though…that is also permissible till such time that Flipkart is a dominant player.”
Also, if the selling below cost argument is taken to its logical conclusion then the “loss-leader” concept in retail chains will also have to come to an end. Investopedia defines this as a strategy “ in which a business offers a product or service at a price that is not profitable for the sake of offering another product/service at a greater profit or to attract new customers.” Airline seats being sold on a discount at the last minute will also have to stop.
It is worth remembering here that technical progress always throws people out of jobs and puts the incumbents in tough situations. Ecommerce is doing precisely that with offline retail. So does that mean there should be no ecommerce?
Hazlitt explains it best when he writes: “The technophobes, if they were logical and consistent, would have to dismiss all this progress and ingenuity as not only useless but vicious. Why should freight be carried from Chicago to New York by railroad when we could employ enormously more men, for example, to carry it all on their backs?”

PS: The irony is that Kishore Biyani who built a good part of his business by offering huge discounts over long weekends and thus created troubles for many a kirana shop, is now having problems with the same strategy.
The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on Oct 9,2014

 (Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)