I

hate shopping with my wife. Don't get me wrong. I love doing things together, including walking the malls and I don't mind accompanying her trying different shoes in many different stores over the weekend.

It's when she haggles over the prices that I wished I was invisible. It's not only embarrassing, but it's cruel as she is dealing with small traders who most likely work on slim margins. The worst part is that we always end up having a heated argument later in the car, between the socialist-me and the capitalist-her. She always wins.

This haggling happens not in department stores but in traditional markets, like the Mayestik in South Jakarta where she goes for most of our foodstuffs. She could spend several minutes haggling over the price and then walk away from a deal over just a Rp 1,000 difference. In all likelihood, when the margin is already that low, she would win.

Here is one typical encounter with a banana trader in Mayestik.

Wife: How much (for this bunch)?

Trader: 20,000 rupiah (US$2).

Wife: Too much. Seven-and-half?

Trader: Get real madam. I paid more than that. Fifteen

Wife: Last week I paid 10,000. These are not fresh and have to be eaten by tomorrow. Ten.

Trader: Please Bu, I am here to make some money. For ten, I will let you have this smaller one.

Wife: Ten is my last price. I want this one.

After a bit more haggling, the trader goes down to 11,000. My wife refuses to go higher than 10,000. She motions to me to move to the next stall which also sells bananas. I give her the look that tells her to just accept it and go, but she ignores me and starts to move away.

Trader: Ok Bu. 10,000. How many do you want?

Wife: Oh, just this one

Later in the car, we will have our argument. I tell her she was squeezing the small traders and that I would have settled at Rp 15,000 because the extra Rp5,000 means a lot more to the trader than to us. She should have shown compassion to the small people.

"But darling, you are taking the fun out of shopping."

And then she drops the punch line: "You've never seen my mom in action. She would have gotten 5,000 for that bunch of bananas."

I don't think I want to know how she would pull it off, but I can believe it.

"You don't understand women. For us, haggling is an art."

You can't argue against art. In her unsophisticated way, she, her mother and many like her believe that the law of supply and demand prevails in setting prices in a free market environment. This is the chief tenet of neo-liberal economic theory. Leave it to market forces.

God bless my mom-in-law. She raised her seven children by herself. She and her family wouldn't be where they are today if she had not run a tight household budget. The eldest son is a top pediatrician and other children rose to prominence.

The Minangkabau, the main ethnic group in West Sumatra, where we come from, know all about market forces because they are famous for their trade skills. They are among the nation's most ardent proponents of the free market economic system because they rely on trade for their livelihood. They would not be able to survive in a controlled market environment.

Their belief in market forces applies both ways, in selling and buying.

Funnily, my wife would readily part with her money in department stores where you cannot bargain, even knowing that they make obscene margins. You can tell how large their margin from the way they knock prices down, sometimes as much as 75 percent, when they hold grand sales.

In the neoliberal free-for-all world, there is no fast rule on how low do you start when you haggle. It could be half, but could be as low as a tenth.

If unlike me you have no scruples, the trick is to ask and then to look completely disinterested.

Although market forces have been good to us, I fully agree with the current sentiment that neoliberalism is bad for Indonesia and should therefore be completely banned. It will prevent me from having unnecessary arguments with the wife.