Dual Monopoly

Ethics dictates that monopoly is to be preferred in everything. Needless to say this goes against capitalist economics, which is indirect evidence for immorality of capitalism, but more on that some other time.

What I mean when I say that monopoly is to be preferred is that unity within a system is far more efficient for producing prosperity than adversity. Take the human body - as long as it operates under the monopoly of a single genetic conclave, it can be expected to prosper (since genes that couldn't get along just died out). When, however, rogue genetic material enters the human body (as bacteria or virus), disease ensues. 

Disease is the scars left by warfare among genes for nutrition. 

Same in business - it makes little sense for companies to enter competition with one another if they can merge and thus exchange adversity for unity. It is only in extremely rare cases that it is more profitable for a company to continue vying with others, namely, when the market is just emerging or undergoing dramatic change - when a company can hope to emerge more profitable at the expense of other companies. This scenario is unlikely in stable markets where the product or service provided cannot be expected to be improved, specifically in most utility and basic necessity providing businesses such as water, electricity, nutrition commodities (unprocessed foodstufffs), data transfer/storage etc.

But there is the flip-side of monopoly I am not oblivious to, of course. We are reminded again and again by economists that ethical considerations notwithstanding, monopolies tend to become assholes, artificially increasing prices, and driving scarcity to maximize profits.

Monopoly preferred by a company may not be preferred by its clients.

And this is undeniably true for every capitalist monopoly - without outside regulation and ethics-enforcement either from a democratic government or direct pressure from people themselves, the wellbeing-increasing capacity of monopoly will be abused to create profit for select individuals.

Avoiding or negating this problem, it seems to me, should be the holy grail of economics and applied ethics. Here is my take on it.

Capitalism has to go. If not right now and in its entirety, then selective de-capitalization has to be enforced relentlessly in areas of public interest. This, of course, is not a new idea and is already working exemplary in many countries around the world - utility companies are either state-owned and provide their services at reasonably low and accessible costs (profit going into the wellfare budget anyway) or privately owned, but constantly regulated and inspected to ensure the company is not ran for mere profit, but of customer satisfaction. 

What I am arguing for, however, is a much more intense monopolization and de-capitalization, the prime suspect being the food industry. I see no reason why there should be more than a couple milk and bread processors in a country. I first began thinking about this when I asked myself how come foreign milk is always cheaper than the one we produce ourselves. It's so bizarre, even with the additional cost of transporting the milk significantly further to reach its customers, which involves the myriad costs of trucks moving and freezers rattling that much longer etc, foreigners can pull off milk being 10% cheaper. This means they produce it at as low as 80% cost as we do, which means they are 25% more efficient. Think about it - if they produced all the milk, they could meet all our milk demands and use only 80% of resources we would have used. Think of all the economic, environmental, time and human resources saved. That's mindblowing! What I want here, then, is for foreigners to totally out-compete the local useless producers merely on ethical grounds. If not, I want the foreigners to take over the local companies and introduce their undeniably more efficient means of production here. And I see no reason the local government should not weigh in on this goal either with relaxed legislation, allowing foreign companies to purchase local ones and make investments, or with direct monetary incentives for local companies to offer themselves for sale to foreign partners at reduced price. 

What we have to strive for is monopolization and unification of every single industry on the planet, because that is what maximizes an industries output and capacity to provide the needed goods and services, but at the same time, just as importantly, we have to constantly ensure that these global monopolies are working not for pure profit, but for maximizing customer satisfaction.

Lastly, since we live in a scumbag-filled world of rampant corruption, I always encourage indie competition for the big monopolies, existing or desired. That is because there always is just too much we don't know and, hence, an infinite amount of ways to improve on the monopolies, at least for a time before that adopt the improvements. This would take the form of small companies with innovative products and services at the cutting edge of technology and trends in anything from data-services to organic foods and alternative energy sources.

Thanks, Discuss!