Scrambling for Mangos

Mango season can be frightening when one lives under a mango tree. In the still of night, dozing to the hum of cicadas and chirps of vampire bats, a crash from a falling mango landing on my tin roof can make me wide awake instantly. Flashlights and hushed voices of children at five in the morning wake me up again as the harvesters gleam the precious fruit from around my house.

Early in the season, when bunches of green mangos tempt the hungry, one must make an effort to find ripe fruit. When a ripe mango falls during the day, all work or conversation instantly stops and everyone scrambles for the prize as in a game of spoons. The victor holds the fruit aloft as the other walk sulkily away.

Mango season provided an opportunity to explain basic business economics in my radio show. With scarce resources, those who have a greater desire for mangoes must make a greater effort to obtain them. This (partially) is why prices are higher when there are fewer goods than the people who want them. Too many mangoes, however, will result in ripe fruit sitting uneaten under the tree, for when there is too much of a good, people will no longer pay enough to meet a seller’s costs, and eventually would not take any more even if it were offered for free. This ties into the law of diminishing returns, or as I explain on the air, “the fifth mango does not taste as good as the first.” This in turn leads into marginal analysis, or finding out exactly how many mangoes people want to buy before it is no longer profitable to sell mangoes. Sometimes people save mangoes for another day, because they know that the first mango they eat each day tastes the best. This is called delayed gratification.

Economics is human action. Any economic concept that does not describe what people do is mere mathematics. For this reason, any economic idea, despite complicated technical names, can be explained in any language to anyone, no matter where they live. In my radio show, specialization of labor occurred when two boys each had to decide whether they would hunt for tapir or fish for kumalu. A woman’s reluctance to by assai because she did not have qwak to eat it with showed that assai and qwak are complementary goods, they go together. In languages without extensive vocabulary, complex ideas may take a little time to explain, but it definitely can be done. Now it’s time for a mango.