John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL SNYDER IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Almost Every Sector of the US Economy Is a Monopoly or an Oligopoly - Crushing the Working Man
“Shocking facts and statistics about how corrupt the US economy has become”.
Yes, the increasing concentration of industries is a fundamental American social-economic problem.
It becomes a problem for more than one country, too, when other countries feel they must respond to the international challenge of gigantic enterprises from America or anywhere else.
No, as someone has commented below, there is indeed no such thing as a "free" market. The free market is an economists' model for analysis and not a reality.
But there very much is such a thing as a reasonably competitive market.
It is an obligation of good government to keep markets in that state.
But the American government long ago began to ignore this obligation, just as it ignores its obligation around fair and reasonable taxation.
The dominant ethic today is "let her rip," but that comes with many consequences.
The American high-tech sector, for example, screams for action around its anti-competitive nature and abuse of power, but the American government couldn't care less. Why?
Well, the desire to see the empire prevail has a lot to do with it. Really enormous-scale industries can compete and dominate against other nations.
American political campaign financing enters the picture, too.
American elections are a money free-for-all, and only the big guys have a serious role to play.
By the way, since both American political parties operate along much the same lines as regards campaign money, we have no leadership to look to for help. Neither party has any incentive.
So ordinary people are stuck with huge, uncompetitive entities for what are now pretty much basic services, and they are stuck with the huge political influence of the same entities.
When we had industries in the past that were so-called natural monopolies, which is just a technical reality in some industries - the old telephone companies are a good example - they were at least regulated as to rates and services.
And when we had other monopolies which were the result of predatory practices - John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil is the classic example - American antitrust laws were used to break them up into a number of competing companies.
You sure won't see that now.
