Planner Reads

The recession and the crisis and banking are the least of the reasons for thinking that we need reforms. the crisis of capitalism goes much deeper: the influence big business has on governments (and the warped policies this leads to), increasing central control of the economy and the general move away from free markets.. I have some modest proposals on how to fix capitalism. Break up monopolies and oligopolies Under existing competition (anti-trust in American) laws, it is necessary to prove abuse of the monopoly. This allows a business to avoid competition, because it has not been proved to have used particular practices. Competition may be locked out (for example, by network effects) and consumers may suffer from a lack of innovation or product quality, but none of that is illegal. The solution is to assume that monopolies are harmful and should be broken up. Either this should be an invariable rule, or it should be up to the monopolist to prove that the monopoly is somehow beneficial. An exception should be made for natural monopolies, but the price of that should be tight regulation, nationalisation, or (best of all) ...