Freakonomics

(This essay appeared in my column JUSTIFIED.)


You get the clue that the economy is really in bad shape, despite government claims to the contrary, when product-makers and manufacturers use the same raw material for the different products they churn out. Or, when the consumers themselves use the same ingredient or resource or item for a variety of uses.

Call it whatever you like---maximization, efficiency, practicality---but whatever it's called, it sure is an indicator of the state of our nation's economy and probably a pointer to where it (the economy, stupid) is going. Forget about those statistics issued by the NEDA, DBM and other economic and financial gobbledygook that make your eyes glaze and which you could not, for the life of you, understand unless you have an Economics degree from the U.P. School of Economics (like I do, nyahahaha).

Look around you and be observant enough: if only a handful of resources or materials are being used as the main or active ingredient in most of the products that we use, then either that material or resource is a wonder product or the state of the economy had called for more belt-tightening measures. I bet it's more of the latter since it's quite a stretch to be using the same thing for a variety of uses than is humanly possible.

For example papaya: probably the most over-used fruit there is. You eat papaya for dessert; you add papaya to your tinola. Then there is papaya soap, papaya body wash and papaya lotion. I think it won't be long before enterprising entrepreneurs (pardon my alliteration) would come up with papaya shampoo, or maybe some fraking brainiac has already invented it somewhere. By golly, even the young, green papayas have not been spared! Now, we have green papaya soaps. So how come we have been wildly abusing this helpless fruit? Blame it on the economy!

Countless vegetables and fruits have been turned into a form of product or another.

Whereas cucumber and avocado were mainly for the palate, now facial lotions have avocado and cucumber varieties. Even the lowly calamansi is not too small to be dispensed with from this economic malaise. Calamansi is not only turned into juice but as an ingredient in facial lotions, as a stain remover and as an ingredient in laundry soaps as well.

Then there is green tea. It is the scent of your air deodorizer and an ingredient in your juice drink. Sooner or later the consumer would turn green or smell like tea for drinking and inhaling green tea at the same time. Don't ask me which one is worse.

We are not turning vegetarians or environmentalists, mind you; otherwise we wouldn't be seeing long queues at McDonald's or Yellow Cab (or Jollibee if you're a dyed-in-the-wool probinsiyano), we wouldn't be peeing on walls and dumping trash into our esteros. It is just that the economy has gotten really bad that we can't help but be utterly creative in the use of our limited resources.

Even one of my most fave things---coffee---is being milked (pun intended) for all its possible uses: as a beverage, ice cream ingredient and as a flavoring in cookies. Oh, there was even this cell phone holder I saw in a mall with coffee bean designs and has the aroma of real coffee!

Newspapers and magazines are not only for reading anymore. Since there's not much to read in the papers anyway unless you relish those gory photos of terrorist attacks (in which case you're a sadist) and are keeping a body count of the typhoon and tsunami casualties, they better be used dor wrapping dried fish, flowers or even as pamaypay (fan). At least that way you can recover the cost of the magazine or newspaper one way or another.

See, the economy has really deteriorated. We wouldn't go through all that trouble of multi-using a single item other than what it was originally intended for.

Now read this piece fast so you can recycle the paper on which it is printed on!