Middlemen who buy peasant produce and resell it in town markets are routinely blamed for dear food and treated as parasites to be cleared away. Mintz, writing from fieldwork in Jamaica in 1952, makes the opposite case. Small farms feeding the internal economy sit alongside a plantation sector geared to export, and the higgler is what connects the two.

Her efficiency has to be judged against the resources actually available. Higgling absorbs labour that is abundant and idle while economizing on capital, which is scarce; the sheer number of traders, each working thin margins with no price agreements among them, keeps the business genuinely competitive. Clearing them out would require capital better spent elsewhere and would strip income from women whose alternative is domestic service. Citing Bauer on West Africa, Mintz warns against mistaking technical backwardness for economic waste when reform is being planned.