An interesting musing I had today concerning socio-political- and economic theory. If one thinks about it, in a totally unregulated economic environment (Laissez-faire) natural monopolies eventually solidify, and dominate over the market place. Whether one wants to admit this or not is their business, but even I, a capitalist have come to this conclusion. But it is not my goal to put down capitalism; a system I happen to hold is the only ethical, and pragmatic way to ensure “social justice”, to use one of the left's terms. My goal is to point out an inherent risk to capitalism itself from within its own system. So making the assumption that naturally overtime the markets would consolidate into either a bi-polar, or uni-polar market with either one, or two corporate actors controlling production; they put the entire system itself at risk.
To begin they come to represent the entire sector or market which they govern, this in turn makes them un-intended targets for the demagogues' tool of projection. Now for the purposes of this conversation we are going to assume that socialist actors within the state are seeking to convert the economic system of capitalism into its transitional state of socialism; using a revisionist model of the communistic ideology. (Meaning rather than revolution they convert the system using its own laws, and policy tools). This setting of either a monopolistic, or duopolistic system makes it easy for the state to then demonize the market environment by pointing out flaws in its product, or ultimately any problem associated with the product. Allowing them to turn the consumer against the company(ies).
A good example of this in the real world is what has happened with oil companies. Politicians have demonized these corporate actors for the prices they charge. There are two flaws with this, first of all no one is entitled to gasoline or oil, it is a product you buy just like a drink at a store, or candy on a shelf. If a company decides to charge a certain amount it is their prerogative alone to do so. The option for the consumer is to then buy someone else's product, even if a company wants to withhold product from sales to drive the price up, they can do that considering they are the ones who own the oil. Second of all it is flawed in that the state pulls in more profit than the company. An oil company makes maybe five cents per gallon of gas, while the state pulls in over fifty to seventy cents per gallon.
Meanwhile the politicians demand that oil companies lower prices, and sacrifice their profits while secretly the government continues to rake it in. Why should a private corporation whose continued existence is dependent on its ability to sell its product, be forced to sacrifice the little that it makes, while the government who even without that additional tax would still be pulling in trillions and trillions a year from the thousands of other taxes it applies to income, wealth transfer, consumption, sales excreta? Who is the one doing the exploitation here? In all honesty it appears the government is using the company as a tool to pull in revenue, while trying to make their business un-profitable, and at the same time demanding more gas taxes, and profits taxes to punish the companies for its exploitation thusly increasing the state's revues. The ultimate result of which is public hatred, which they then exploit by "punishing" this company, and thusly wining more votes form the ignorant masses. They use the very high prices which they themselves have exacerbated to create an enemy which they the good socialists can then triumph over, and defeat. Is this a joke?
In the end as these taxes just ultimately raise the price further, because the companies will have to keep raising costs to stay in business, and meet the added tax burden; the state in this instance will be able to confuse the public further, and ultimately justify making these companies quasi-public organizations, meaning now the government dominates this organization. This is the ultimate threat to capitalism in that since that company, or these two companies dominated the entire sector, and they have now been partially nationalized, the government now controls that entire sector turning that area of the economy into a public division.
The reason they would choose to do this, rather than simply break up the monopolies is the fact that
(A) in the past those monopolies just eventually reform, making the act meaningless, and (B) they have no motivation to maintain capitalism
Their goal is to use revisionist socialism, and its tactics to convert the society. So in this way Laissez-faire is counter productive to its own self-preservation, in that it generates a socio-political environment which ultimately justifies in the people's mind an intervention via state action; as well as a further encroachment by government onto the private sector, and the interests of the capitalistic system itself.
