Diary of a Wacko

Sydney Morning Herald: Capitalism takes a haircut

A market by definition involves choices. Soon there will be no choices, or few: one owner of razors, one owner of shaving foam, one newspaper publisher, one toilet tissue maker and one cable television operator.

The global monopoly is upon us, and the golden age of the competitive market is a fading memory. The anti-trust rules have been found wanting.

Karl Marx appears to have triumphed, but in a way rather different than the great buffoon expected. Instead of the state owning the means of production, the lone mega-corporation will. In tandem, the dictatorship of the proletariat will become a reality: everything we see and do will be governed by the ghastly tastes, whims and fetishes of the masses, before whose rapacious demands the mega-corp will duly roll over and deliver.

[...]

The rise of the monopoly spells the end of the daytrading profession. There wont be anything worth investing in any more - only vast deals between huge corporations available to a few hedge funds and unpleasantly rich individuals. All the IPOs will be stitched up, and then swallowed up.

With this grim thought in mind, I decided to take a break from investing. I went fishing. I didn't catch anything, but it took my mind off the coming days of global control by three giant, profoundly ugly corporations. Somewhat irrationally, I suddenly wished they would all be fragmented, smashed apart, into little pieces big enough for that guppie to eat.

[...]

How does one survive in a society in which everything one does is pre-ordained and pre-planned by a huge corporation?

[...]

Over a coffee at Starbucks, and a burger at McDonald's, I decided that one must choose: the mega-corp, or anarchy.

I veered towards anarchy. I yearned for the destruction of trade barriers, and western markets opened to the teeming producers of the Third World.

Only then would we day traders find some proper investment opportunities in the millions of little companies that produce things more cheaply and efficiently than the lumbering dinosaurs of the mature industrial countries. In Kenyan coffee and Ghanaian tomatoes. In Mozambique sugar and Filipino bananas.

Of course, I fully acknowledge that removing trade barriers worldwide would usher in a period of widespread anarchy, in which millions of western workers hitherto propped up by tax subsidies would lose their jobs.

[...]

We day traders must stick together and campaign for more choice! More competition! More free markets!

Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald.

I'm not certain who wrote this (the area where there'd be a byline says "Non-workers of the world unite, behind James Bone."), but a clearer case of emotional contamination of one's thought processes I cannot dig up at the moment. Whoever it is is dead right on busting trade barriers and dead wrong on the inevitability of free market monopolization. When you have free entry into the market, not even the biggest and most dominant industry player will remain on top forever.

Posted by Drizzten at February 08, 2005 03:07 PM