The Market For "Demons"

"Experts depend on the fact that you don’t have the information they do. Or that you are so befuddled by the complexity of their operation that you wouldn’t know what to do with the information if you had it. Or that you are so in awe of their expertise that you wouldn’t dare challenge them."

- S Levitt & S Dubner, Freakonomics, 

Greetings. We have smoothly welcomed back the idea of going to our respective places of worship after a six month shutdown. Still, one ponders upon certain matters that pertain to the state of the churches. Long before the lockdown, there were always concerns about the direction certain leaders and their organisations were taking. Some leaders of faith were wont to gain publicity by deeds other than those considered exemplary; verbal abuse, financial fraud, exploitation, etc. Showmanship, whereas not a negative virtue, is however a key aspect of attracting a congregation. With this background, I draw parallels with the current trend of religious affairs and economic wisdom of Akerlof.

The Market for Lemons

George Akerlof's most seminal work, The Market for Lemons, examines how information asymmetry influences the quality of goods traded in a market. Akerlof studied the market for used cars in the US, and tried to explain why only bad cars ("lemons") are left on the market. The sellers know more about their cars than the buyers, given the price offering from buyers the sellers will only be willing to part with the lemons. Overtime, the buyers' willingness to purchase cars will decrease, leading to sellers of high quality cars to leave the market. The result is an end to the existence of markets all together as Akerlof summarises

"For it is quite possible to have the bad driving out the not-so-bad driving out the medium driving out the not-so-good driving out the good in such a sequence of events that no market exists at all."

The key tenet here is information, or lack of it. When applied to churches, the modern preacher can be categorised into two;  the traditional preacher who attends to his flock on Sunday and is free to delegate some aspects to lay leaders and will not promise to drive out demons or deliver a ticket to Dubai or a husband for that matter! The second category, call him the new school preacher, won't spare any promise; ticket to Dubai, a wife,/husband, a job, prophesies, casting out demons, etc. The new school preacher is well versed in marketing his services. For purposes of theological debate beyond my grasp, I shall eliminate healing from both categories.

The traditional preacher, given he makes no promises (mostly because such preachers have a superior they answer to in the shape of bishop, mufti, and the like, i.e. think organised religion), the congregants are well informed about what they are getting from him. The gospel is preached on Sunday, children are baptised, couples are wed, etc. Basically he/she is "tending to the flock", as the Latin origin for the word pastor means shepherd.

The Market for Demons

On the other hand, the new school preacher knows quite a lot more about his "capabilities" than the congregants. One who pronounces oneself banisher of demons is the sole authority on ones capability, given there is no licensing board on said subject. The congregants are lured in with hopes of getting these promises and prophesies delivered, and in return they are willing to pay to have their hopes fulfilled.  

In the end, we find the congregation growing at the places of worship where miracles can be guaranteed compared to their counterparts that solely preach. It is a common phenomenon where people have resorted to only visiting the old school churches for wedding vows, while spending every waking hour at the new school places of worship. 

In terms of traffic and attendance figures, the new school preachers are driving out the old school preachers. And so in the market for demons, he who can guarantee immediate banishment stands a great chance of growing his/her congregations (and with that the collection basket is certain to grow). And as the Akerlof sequence of the bad driving out the good holds, if a religious market ceases to exist, this can only mean the triumph of atheism!

But are demons the preserve of urban centres? There's a disproportionate distribution of new school preachers in urban centres compared to rural centres. Streets in Kampala are littered with pastors proclaiming the second coming, there's all sorts of commercial advertising of pastors promising to deliver people from "ancestral bondage". In the rural areas, these new school churches and the commercial advertising of churches are almost absent. Even the witch doctors are not paying for commercial airtime to promote their abilities to banish demons. The answer could lie in the income distribution. 

The urban GDP per capita is considerably greater than that of rural areas. Case in point: at $3,250 per head, Wakiso (which is home to urban dwellings of Namugongo, Kira, Kireka, Najjera) has a higher GDP per capita than Kenya, the richest state in East Africa! The people in Wakiso will give more in offertory (not mentioning Thanksgiving, consultation fees with pastor, development contribution to the extension of the sitting area, etc) than their counterparts in Kabong (Kabong and the rest of Karamoja combined contribute less than 1% of GDP). The new school preacher will thrive more in the urban centres than he would if he ventured out in the rural areas.

The rural people get to keep their demons, for now! 

Ceteris. Paribus.

P.S.

Happy New Year. I hope this will be a fruitful year for us all.

Further Reading

Akerlof, G.A., (1970). "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism". Quarterly Journal of Economics. The MIT Press. 84 (3): 488–500

Cassidy, J., (2009). How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giraux. Chapter 12: Hidden Information and the Market for Lemons, pp.151-165

Editor, (April 2020). "COVID-19 pandemic exposes church fraudsters- Pastor Male," The Independent. 

Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J., (2005). Freakonomics. New York: William Morrow. Chapter 2: How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents? pp.55-88

Rafa, M., Moyer, J. D., Wang, X., & Sutton, P. (2017). Estimating district GDP in Uganda.

Wang, X., Rafa, M., Moyer, J. D., Li, J., Scheer, J., & Sutton, P. (2019). Estimation and mapping of sub-national GDP in Uganda Using NPP-VIIRS imagery. Remote Sensing, 11(2), 163.