In Superman’s Bizarro multiverse, he is represented by a distorted mirror image with the same powers albeit, rather than defend truth and justice, Bizarro Superman championed falsehood and injustice. In the Bizarro world, everything is the opposite: good becomes bad, heroes are villains and genius is stupidity. There, Robin Hood would not be stealing from the rich to give to the poor. He would be robbing the poor to give to the rich.

It is easy to see where this discourse is headed when we extrapolate the world of comic books and English folklore to our present-day reality. We have an economy under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. characterized by unprecedented serial increases in the cost of energy and debilitating food inflation underwritten by alter-egos and our wholesale surrender to what appears as an illegitimate mandate.

A case in point is the recent cap on the price of rice. It is uneducated to say the least. By referencing medieval history and perhaps a Philippine cliché depicting political absurdity, we see where the attempt to repeal the law of supply and demand has its origins.

Remember King Canute and the futility of turning the tides? Referring to a monarch’s mortal powers, public philosopher Theodore Dalrymple said, “Political power or office often gives those who possess it the illusion that they control events.”

Such proverbial omnipotent delusion is likewise reflected in that old joke about Ramon Magsaysay and attempts at repealing the law of supply and demand.

We can now add Marcos to the list. One made startingly sharp and acerbic because his Phd-pedigreed economic managers who first declared support now belatedly say they were out of town when the ludicrous cap was announced. Perhaps the emperor’s royal couturiers might do better by admitting their principal is walking around butt-naked.

Unfortunately, behind the absurdity is an unhumorous iron fist as callous and psychopathic as a precedent dictator’s.

While it may have its legal foundations where emergency powers respond to sudden unforeseen calamities, the likelihood of an open-ended multiplier disaster founded on both disinformation and dereliction wrench away any legitimacy.

Remember that the bureaucracy maintained no shortage existed, that buffer stock was adequate and that the meteoric rise in prices was caused by cartels, hoarders and price manipulators.

All these, if true, are sufficiently covered by the penal code and special laws that require employing police powers. Perhaps Marcos thinks jailing domestic cheats might reduce global prices, compel India to lift its rice export ban and reduce Vietnam’s export prices to a level where Vietnamese rice can be sold domestically at P41/kilo to P45/kilo.

While rewriting Philippine history, the Department of Education might as well teach Supply and Demand tailored to current delusions.

Meanwhile, everyone along the rice value chain from upstream rice farmers to the downstream retailers and rice consumers will suffer from the effects of an uneducated and harmful directive.

For the harvesting rice farmers whose farmgate prices crashed from its P20/kilo to P25/kilo levels to P15/kilo and below, their higher planting costs inclusive of imported fertilizers and pesticides purchased during the lean mid-year months will all but practically erase prospective margins.

Millers, given the relentless rise in energy costs, also due to governance incompetence and our continuing dependence on fuel importations aggravated by a devalued peso, will unlikely continue operating at a loss. This also affects miller/wholesalers who purchased palay at higher prices in August and the months before.

As for retailers, likewise forced to sell at a loss, the same fellow who promised P20/kilo rice now promises a sorely insufficient P2 billion cash assistance dole. There are 54,000 retailers plus 9,500 wholesale/retailers nationwide. Do the math. Can P1,000 a day compensate for a month’s losses?

While the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL) carved out a subsidy for retailers, this did not include others selling below cost. Since the RTL is a function of importations, the prospect of even higher global rice prices creates a cost-squeeze. August landed costs were about P35/kilo. 

Add 20% as exporters adjusted to India’s ban. With the Marcos cap and a 35% RTL duty, it makes sense for finance officials to seek zero tariffs since the totality of costs disincentivizes trading under volatile conditions. Even Vietnam, our main source against whom we recently negotiated a five-year contract at higher premiums, has left the question of pricing open-ended.

Discern the effects of each along the total value chain. The shortage the DA repeatedly denied will now be created, catalyzing a toxic brew of higher rice prices, adulterated stock, black-market rice or unaffordable premium rice inaccessible to the poor.

The Hood Robin inverse effect does not end there. Note how the government effectively takes from the poorest and hands over windfalls to the richest.

One, at the expense of domestic farmers, importers will enjoy tariff-free importations when Marcos zeroes-out duties for at least a year.

Two, the fertilizer diversification initiative which would have added 1.2 million metric tons and earned over P24 billion was deliberately defunded and backburnered. Curiously, there is an insistence on using imported petroleum and chemical-based soil-killing fertilizers instead of more productive biofertilizers, tons of which remain in warehouses, unused but spent for.

Three, the National Rice Program increased by a mere 1.9%, way below the inflation rate (ours being among the highest in Southeast Asia). That is a virtual reduction.

Four, Marcos’s incremental budget for agriculture increased to only 3.5% of the total budget. The historical average since exorcising ourselves of the Marcos dictatorship was 5.2%. For 2024, it falls to even less.

Five, Marcos’s Build Better More (BBM), consistent with his delusional P20/kilo rice, neglects our 3.5 million rice farmers. Even the DA’s most incompetent knows government provides irrigation infrastructure yet only 2.2% of the BBM budget was allocated for the National Irrigation Administration.

If our hard-earned taxes are not spent for Filipino farmers who feed us, then where are our billions going? That is not an easy question to answer. The uses may be confidential. – Rappler.com

Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker and managing director of a New Jersey-based power company operating in the Philippines. He is the chairman of the board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance, and Mathematics professor. He collects Godzilla figures and antique tin robots.