Mozambique’s government has reversed the increase in the price of bread, a decision that directly led to deadly riots in that country last week. It is the right course of action. But it does raise the question: Did officials really not foresee problems with unilaterally raising the price of an essential commodity? We’ll forget for now whether it is a good idea for the government to have that much control over prices and simply puzzle over whether no one in Mozambique’s government stopped to say “hey, this is a country with a lot of poor people and the economy isn’t exactly improving. Maybe raising the price on something so vital to day-to-day sustenance is a bad idea.” Even if no one foresaw violence, surely they could have gleaned that there was not much of a positive outcome in the cards, right?
