The betrayal of Adam Smith June 20, 2007
Posted by Al in : interesting,politics , trackbackAnother interesting article, on economics this time, and I would imagine this would worry Americans more than the rest of the world, solely because Adam Smith has been part of their economic culture for so long. Anyway, the gist of this article is that Adam Smith would weep if he were to be reincarnated in modern times, as monopolies, cartels and an unbalanced market have lead to some companies wielding an inordinate amount of power, and leverage, on their portion of the market. This is leading to the loss of competitive markets, and so the loss of competition between small and large competitors in those markets. As this trend continues conglomerates will tend to conglomerate into larger and larger market forces, until there will be only a small number of large companies dominating each market sector; and there is no reason for these forces not to combine over differing sectors. Maybe it will all end up like Highlander: with a Google/Coke/IBM alliance crowing “There can be only one”. Who knows where such market led capitalism will get us, but we can be certain that the current large players in the market have no wish for the current environment to end, just as we can have no doubt that Adam Smith would not approve of such an environment.
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