Should we continue to use the phrase "private traders squeeze prices"?

(Baonghean) -Occasionally, when farmers' goods are stagnant and have difficulty in consumption, purchase, and transaction, in order to trace the cause of the incident, we see the phrase "private traders forcing down prices" appear in newspapers, on radio, and in conferences. Rice, sugar cane, coffee, watermelon, longan, lychee, citrus, pigs, chickens, geese, ducks, and ducks... cannot be sold, all because of "private traders forcing down prices"? This "private trader" has too much power! He wants to force down prices on anyone, so he does? That way of speaking and writing makes us think that our market has lost the principle of "willing buyer, willing seller"?

The two words “private traders” appeared in the subsidy period. At that time, the task of our socialist commerce was to distribute goods according to coupons - the distribution function overshadowed the transaction and trading function. Socialist commerce at that time had two types of state-owned trading stores and trading cooperatives. In addition, anyone who traded anywhere and anything was called a “private trader”. Those two forms of business were typical manifestations of the two methods of socialist commercial economic activities. At the same time, they were also two forms of ownership - state-owned commercial ownership and collective commercial economic ownership. At that time, the concept of state economy and collective economy were the only two economic forms of the socialist economy. Therefore, in commerce, trading activities outside of state-owned trade and cooperative stores were all illegal private trading activities, which needed to be fought and prevented. Surely we still remember and know the melody of the song "Angry but loving" in the play "When the teammate is away" by playwright Nguyen Trung Phong:

You are going the wrong way, I can't stand it.

Brother, please don't be angry.

Because I love you, I discussed it with my mother.

Determined to stop him from going back to Luong…

The “wrong-way” person in this play is the husband who is being prevented by his wife from going “upstream” to buy a load of green tea to bring back to Dien Chau junction to sell! That’s right, at that time, private trading was considered a bad thing. So, after the word “private trader”, people immediately added a verb that means a bad thing, which is “price gouging”! The phrase “private trader price gouging” was born in that situation, that context. It has an unsavory, unkind meaning! It is true that in reality, “private traders” often haggle when buying and selling. But that is the art of negotiation to agree and decide on prices. The market always operates according to the principle of “willing to buy, willing to sell”. The price of goods reflects the law of the relationship between “supply” and “demand”, no one can impose prices on the market according to their own will. Therefore, saying "private traders force down prices" is a somewhat subjective and imposed way of speaking.

Nowadays, social concepts about economic issues have changed a lot. Currently, our country's economy is a multi-sector economy, including state economy, collective economy, private economy, economy of entrepreneurs, foreign enterprises... The role and position of private commerce in the general economy of the country have been planned. The perception of that issue also needs to change, to suit reality. Is it true that the two words "private traders" belong to the past, the meaning of those two words is too far from today's reality? When we understand that market prices are a reflection of the relationship between "supply" and "demand", the phrase "private traders squeeze prices" is indeed a proposition with content that is still imposing and obviously very unscientific! Nowadays, consulting companies, brokerage companies, LLCs... in general, private enterprises are growing day by day. This economic force has made many positive contributions to the overall development of the country's economy. Along with the need to re-evaluate the role and position of the private commercial economic sector, is it time for us, including journalists, to remind each other to be more careful when using the phrase "private traders squeeze prices" in our articles?

Litmus