Competition: Paper vs Metal

This opinion below by Max Keiser is important because it reveals the tragic fallacy of a lot of mainstream republican and even some libertarian thinking in the U.S. The government can of course play a role in helping to spur competition as opposed to bailing out the giant corporations who control the world and caving in to their every whim.

From Max Keiser.


Competition is the ultimate regulator. In the USA and UK, the FSA, SEC, SFO – supposed regulators – are the playthings of the kleptocrats and so we don’t have any true competition. Free market competition produces more social justice than top-down government fiat for sure. But there is also a role for government in helping to spur competition. Not only can they enforce laws but they can also protect the public domain – in the example of the environment – the government should continue protecting as much of the public domain as possible (expanding parks, etc.). This is the domain bought and paid for by the public via wars, taxes and hard work. And corporations should be happy to compete in the areas open to them to compete. Obviously, in the case of energy, had the government simply enforced regulations and protected our common wealth and public domain, corporations would have been forced to compete for alternative means of generating energy and we’d already be well past fossil fuels and combustion engines by now. But by subsidizing grossly inefficient corporations like energy companies we get a situation in the U.S. like Nigeria: oil driven kleptocrats bent on eco-holocaust and proliferating poverty. Corporations that need more of the public domain to survive are by definition non-competitive, inefficient corporations that should be left for dead.

Here is the video which accompanied the opinion: