Vint, the government putting more controls on the financial industry was what led to the disaster, combined with shareholder foolishness. People assumed, correctly, that the government controls would result in them being bailed out with taxpayers' loot. Fannie and Freddie, not to mention Goldman Sachs, AIG and others gorged on loads of loot thanks to said "controls".
If there were not the regulations on money production and usage and taxpayer guarantees of any stupid financial decision people make such as buying houses with 110% loans despite having no apparent means of repaying a loan, then people would more often make more sensible financial decisions.
The government putting controls on energy production by choosing winners such as electric cars, wind mills, and whatever other idea takes their fancy will lead to similar waste. I have seen it already with the NZ government doing that in the early 1980s via the Liquid Fuels Trust Board.
There are swarms of people ready and able to invest in energy projects if profits look likely. It doesn't need a government department to mess things up and waste huge amounts of money.
Those trusts could only charge what the market will bear and boost profits short term, until competitors went into competition to get a piece of the action. The trusts were like OPEC - seem like a good idea but really do nothing for OPEC member profits or trust members.
Look at Nokia, L M Ericsson and co going down the gurgler. Even with the EU giving them a legal monopoly, with a ring-fenced price-fixing Europe to rort, they made money while the GSM cartel scam lasted, but are now losing to Huawei, Samsung, LG and others who were not in the club. Nokia and co got fat and lazy with a sense of entitlement. It was the EU government that enabled the cartel.
The W-CDMA cartel is more of the same - with 12% royalties to do the same job [but not as well] as the CDMA2000 technology with 4% or less royalties.
The markets take care of any monopolies. The only monopoly to worry about is the government monopoly which always abuses their power.
People take it as given that the early 20th century trusts were robber barons which were thankfully broken up by government. In fact, there was no merit in breaking them up. The problem was the government protections and advantages they were provided. The phone company for example - competitors were not allowed. Right now, the US$ is a monopoly - a government run monopoly - you had best worry about that one. It's the biggest game in town and will destroy umpty million lives [maybe into the billions]. Some people already consider themselves to be in trouble.
Mqurice |
