Galileo muttered the phrase Eppur si muove, And yet it moves, after being forced to recant in 1633, before the Inquisition, his belief that the Earth moves around the Sun. Similarly the new inquisition of regulators force executives to admit something they did not do, in order to get smaller penalties. Eppur si muove! http://venitism.blogspot.com
Friedrich Hayek attempted in his writings to spotlight the interlocking set of ideas -constructivist rationalism, scientism, socialism, the engineering mentality - that was leading the West down what he famously called the road to serfdom and to propose in its place a return to a revitalized form of libertarianism. We usually do not have the necessary knowledge to intervene effectively in the economy, and the political process is such that, even if we did, we still likely would get bad policy, coupled with an ever-growing government sector.
EU antitrust has been transformed into a terrorist religion, which relies on pseudoeconomic theories that bestow a veneer of objectivity and credibility on EU law enforcement practices that actually rely on hunch, whim, and blackmail. There is only one violator of Fourth Reich antitrust, and that's Fourth Reich itself, which does not allow VAT competition, fixing 15% floor of VAT and 25% ceiling of VAT!
Every time we cede more control to the government, we become more dependent on it. The better choice is not dependence on government to solve problems for us, but binding together in our community and solving problems together, voluntarily.
On all EU antitrust cases, from mergers to price fixing, arbitrary antitrust laws lead to ill-informed juries and bureaucratic abuse. Those laws also create a perverse incentive for entrepreneurs to hold down sales volume, stop innovation, and avoid improvements in price, quality, and service; otherwise, such entrepreneurs could become the next targets of the antitrust terrorists.
When a parliament wants to sidestep an issue rather than resolving it, it calls for a study! The studies can use up lots of resources and parliaments typically ignore them, making them a waste of money. The Wall Street reform bill of the U.S. Congress called for fifty studies, an impressive level of trying to look busy while dodging controversy.
European antitrust laws lead to huge corruption, because government officials ask for kickbacks in order to erase the alleged violation. The standard kickback in EU is 10% of the erased penalty! Many Greek officials were caught on tape asking for the corrupt tithe! Many European political parties make up their election expenses from kickbacks on antitrust cases! This is the worst possible blackmail, where tiptop ethical companies are held hostage by European kleptocrats. Eppur si muove!
The cost of government regulation is truly staggering; it is also a barometer of how free we are to pursue our own interests and to determine the course of our own lives. The cost of regulations is one trillion dollars in USA and two trillion euros in Fourth Reich(EU) every year. The global cost of regulation is six trillion euros every year. Financial costs are not the only burden.
European antitrust law is wielded most often by favor-seeking businessmen and their kleptocrat allies. Instead of focusing on new and better products, disgruntled rivals try to exploit the law by consorting with kleptocrats. EU officials routinely direct antitrust regulators to bend the rules in pursuit of political ends. In reality, the threat of abusive EC power is far larger than the threat of oligopoly. Eppur si muove!
Regulations also result in a tremendous loss of one of our most valuable and limited resources, time. The private sector is spending over 10 billion hours a year just to meet government paperwork demands in USA, and 20 billion hours in Fourth Reich. It is no wonder that regulation discourages the creation of new businesses, new jobs, new products, and new services. Starve the beast by fighting taxes.
The only viable definition of monopoly is a grant of privilege from the government. It therefore becomes quite clear that it is impossible for the government to decrease monopoly by passing punitive laws. The only way for the government to decrease monopoly is to remove its own monopoly grants. The antitrust laws, therefore, do not in the least diminish monopoly. What they do accomplish is to impose a continual, capricious harassment of efficient business enterprise.
Any government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions in order to address the crises that are generated by the previous interventions. Ultimately the crises continue getting so bad that the government ends up taking over the entire sector. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Ronald Reagan considered those nine words the most terrifying in the English language. And the government has been offering a lot of such help lately.
There is an Antitrust Armageddon in Europe between tiptop companies and Fourth Reich(EU). Eurokleptocrats are willing to do anything in order to get kickbacks from industry leaders. The European antitrust laws have the unfortunate consequence of harming Europeans by chilling innovation and discouraging competition. Instead of protecting competition, EU laws protect competitors who give kickbacks to kleptocrats! Kickback is the lubricant that allows a European industry to run smoothly! No European machinery can run without lubricant! Eppur si muove!
The government has the opposite of the Midas touch. This has been observed over and over by the reduced quality and rising prices in every private industry in which it entangles itself. Yet somehow people still seem willing, even eager, to relinquish to government control the most important and sensitive portions of our economy and society. Education, healthcare, and energy are all unfortunate examples of industries that are far too important to be left to government control when it is the market that has the golden touch.
When a company is forward-thinking, proactive, innovative, and productive, it will produce good products that customers want to buy. As a result, it will win a large market share. If the company is much better than its competitors, it might win most, or almost all, of the market. This is the case with Microsoft. It has earned its market share by producing good products that customers want to buy.
There is no magic bullet that will stop the excessive growth of regulation, but there are steps that parliament can take to increase scrutiny of new and existing rules to ensure that each is necessary and that costs are minimized. First of all, it should require a cost analysis of all legislation imposing new regulatory burdens. Although all proposed legislation must be scored by a parliamentary committee to determine likely fiscal costs, there is no similar requirement that regulatory costs be reported.
A company that wins a large market through its own productive efforts deserves accolades. This is because justice, morally, tells us that we must reward the good. However, to the government, a large market share is taken as evidence of anti-competitive behavior, which makes the company a target for antitrust action. This seems to be the motive behind the DOJ's suit against Microsoft.
Every person has two ways to become wealthier. One is to produce more, the other is to capture more of what others produce. Washington and Brussels look increasingly like a public-works jobs programs for lawyers and pullpeddlers, profit centers for professionals who are in business for themselves. Instead of encouraging the economy to invest in engineers, technology and new products, Washington and Brussels require firms to invest in lawyers and pullpeddlers just to stay alive. It will do nothing to help create new wealth or new net jobs in the economy, but will transfer more wealth to lobbying and law firms in Washington and Brussels.
To punish the good because it is good is the most vile inversion of justice conceivable. Yet this is the essence of antitrust, and this is exactly what the DOJ is doing to Microsoft. Microsoft is being targeted because it is good at its business, because it is successful, because it is competent. Nothing could be more unjust than this.
If you want to produce something in America or Fourth Reich, you'd better play the game. Contribute to politicians' campaigns, hire their friends, go hat in hand to a hearing, and apologize for your success. In a parasite economy no good deed goes unpunished for long. Kleptocrats, seeing an opportunity to extend their power and rake in some campaign cash and kickbacks, are circling like sharks. When executives don't show up when kleptocrats invite them, all it does is to increase kleptocrats' interest in what executives are doing and why they do not show up. http://venitism.blogspot.com
The economy is a good deal for people with connections. Executives are willing to invest money in kleptocrats, because they see opportunities in them. Executives see they can win things, that there's something to be gained. Washington and Brussels have become profit centers. All this reflects Depression-era criminal Willie Sutton's observation about robbing banks: That's where the money is.
Kleptocrats are costing trillions of euros and dollars every year. The brilliant minds of Silicon Valley and Redmond Washington, are going to waste time and energy on protecting their companies instead of thinking up new products and new ways to deliver them to consumers. Dragging smaller companies into the political swamps is just the latest diversion of West's productive resources into the unproductive world of political predation.
There are many central planning czars who now bewilder citizens: Afghanistan czar, AIDS czar, auto-recovery czar, border czar, California-water czar, car czar, central-region czar (Middle East, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South Asia), climate czar, domestic-violence czar, drug czar, economic czar (Paul Volcker), energy and environment czar, faith-based czar, government-performance czar, Great Lakes czar, green-jobs czar, Guantanamo-closure czar, health czar, information czar, intelligence czar, science czar, stimulus-accountability czar, pay czar, regulatory czar, Sudan czar, TARP czar, Technology czar, terrorism czar, urban-affairs czar, weapons czar, WMD-policy czar, war czar, oil czar, manufacturing czar, cybersecurity czar, safe-school czar, Iran czar, Mideast-peace czar. http://venitism.blogspot.com
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