It is amazing to me to listen to people talk about how “just a few controls” are necessary and good. Controls on what? They say, “Well, you know those _______! They’d rip off the whole country if we let them!” This is evidence of a complete lack of understanding of a variety of economic principles, not the least of which is “Supply and Demand.”
To think that a company can charge anything it wishes is ludicrous! How much would you pay for something you want? Only as much as you think it’s worth, right? If Wal-Mart raised the price of a VCR to $900, would you buy one? Heck no! And if any company was stupid enough to charge above-market prices, a competitor will come who will charge a more reasonable price and the price will drop.
But, back to the cries for “good regulation”…
“There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept “just a few controls” is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.” –Ayn Rand
The sad part is that people actually believe the government is capable of regulating the markets. Wake up, folks! Only the market is capable of regulating the market!
“There is no way to legislate competition; there are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom, how many competitors should exist in any given field, what should be their relative strength or their so-called “relevant markets,” what prices they should charge, what methods of competition are “fair” or “unfair.” None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a free market.” –Ayn Rand
“The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. It means: forcing people to be free at the point of a gun. It means: protecting people’s freedom by the arbitrary rule of unanswerable bureaucratic edicts.” –Ayn Rand
