This may come as a surprise to many people, but Big Business loves government regulations. It’s surprising to most because it runs contrary to what they’ve been “taught” in the government’s schools and by the government-licensed mainstream media.
The dominant belief is that the businessman wants the free market, but we “need” government to “regulate” him.
Big Corporations love this big lie, and they LOVE that the public believes it.
The truth is that Big Corporations do not want free markets, but are a major driving force for government regulations.
Free markets are HARD.
Consumers are fickle.
Competition is fierce.
It’s much easier to have government regulations protect you from all of it.
Ryan McMaken writes at The Mises Institute:
Many Facebook critics like to claim that Facebook is a natural monopoly. That is, they think Facebook is so dominant in the marketplace, that it can use its supposed market power to keep out competitors. We’re told that Facebook has so many users, no serious competition will ever be possible.
But remember MySpace? People used to say exactly the same thing that that social media platform. A recently as 2007, The Guardian was asking “Will Myspace ever lose its monopoly?” Xerox corporation was once a tech powerhouse, as well. It has now all but disappeared.
Obviously, the answer to the Guardian’s question is “yes.” But we’re now hearing about how Facebook is a monopoly. The reality, however, is that unless governments artificially erects barriers to entry, no firm can expect a safe place as a dominant firm. Other firms with new ideas will come along, threatening the older firm’s dominance.
The answer to this problem, from the point of view of a firm like Facebook, is to make things for expensive and difficult for smaller startups and potential competitors.
Facebook knows that if government regulations of tech firms increase, the cost of doing business will increase. Larger firms will be able to deal with these additional costs more easily than smaller start ups. Big firms can access financing more easily. They have more equity. They already have sizable market share and can afford to be more conservative. Large firms can absorb high labor costs, higher legal costs, and the higher fixed costs brought on by regulation. A high-regulation environment is an anti startup, anti-entrepreneurial environment.
So if you ever catch yourself calling for more “government regulations,” remember one thing, those CEO’s that you like to complain about couldn’t agree with you more.
Do you really want to stick it to the Fat Cat CEO’s?
Call for the removal of ALL government regulations! At most, government should have some basic laws to protect consumers from the use aggressive force or fraud. That’s it.
The CEO’s will fight your proposal tooth-and-nail. Free markets are their nemesis. They much prefer you to clamor for more government regulations.
Sanctions are the foreign policy of choice for the United States. There are sanctions on sanctions and sub-sanctions. Sanctions on countries, companies, individuals, and more. While we have long argued that sanctions never work and only make life miserable for civilians, they also empower an imperial US presidency totally out of reach of Congress.
