Control vs. Competition: Striking the Balance

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Loquitur Veritatem

Rare is the person who doesn’t have a definite view of how the world should be — at least those aspects of it that are important to the person. Even “libertarians” have proven themselves of dictatorial bent in such matters as the state-enforced redefinition of marriage as between anyone and anyone.

Having held a senior management position that made me responsible for the business side of a think-tank full of prime donne analysts (my customers), I know that control is necessary in any organization which strives to survive and thrive. Control is always there, if not in minute-to-minute micromanagement then in the design of processes and performance standards. The more indirect the ways and means of control the happier (generally) will workers be. (There are, of course, some workers who need and seek close direction, and some who need but reject it. Neither type fared well in my regime.)

If you are intelligent and competent, the urge to control can be very strong in you, especially if you are highly conscientious. You want to get things done, and done right. And you aren’t often sure that the people who work for you are capable of doing things right unless you (a) give them a lot of direction and (b) establish processes that help to ensure that their jobs are performed well.

The urge to control — in the manner I just outlined — may seem to conflict with “libertarian” and free-market principles. The reduction or absence of control is touted as the way to ensure that good ideas, systems, and processes are offered up and adopted through demonstrations of their superiority, which leads to and emulation and further innovation. By the same token, the controllers and their systems are forced to prove their worth, rather than appeal to authority (“Because I say so.”) or use authority (regulation) to maintain control.

There is something to be said for both ways of ordering the world. Chaos and inefficiency would reign if organizations (from families to huge corporations) were anarchic. Order and efficiency might emerge here and there because of the instinct to survive and the pressure of competition, but turmoil and waste would abound.

The spontaneous order of “libertarians” and free markets isn’t necessarily instantaneous order. It may take some disastrous wrecks at busy intersections before drivers generally adopt a stop-and-look-and-yield-to-the-car-on-the-right rule. Government institutionalizes the rule by installing stop signs or traffic lights. Government, on the other hand, doesn’t do much between the stop signs and traffic lights, except to arrest and fine violators of speed limits and reckless drivers often enough (in theory) to procure a relatively safe and steady flow of traffic.

Similarly, individual firms may be tightly controlled — whether overtly through micro-management or covertly through processes that have the same effect. But free markets give those firms room in which to innovate, market, and price their products so that consumers get good value for their money, while badly run firms fall by the wayside. In this instance, government (ideally) polices firms only to ensure that they don’t sell dangerous products and services, don’t despoil the environment, and don’t cheat their customers. Government, of course, doesn’t limit itself to minimal interventions because the urge to dictate is made real, all too often, by the power of government to shape commerce to its liking rather than to the tastes and preferences of consumers.

Putting government aside (and how I wish we could, for the most part), there is a flaw in the picture of controlled firms competing freely for consumers’ favor. The flaw is obvious in this reductio ad absurdum: There is one firm in the United States that produces all products and services. The firm has many subdivisions, each of which operates according to protocols that range from minute micro-management to loose-seeming processes that guide workers in the “right” direction. But the giant firm has no competitors and so its output accords with the wishes of its managers, which mesh with consumers’ wishes only by sheer luck.

The easily recognizable result is equivalent to state socialism. The are two reasons that a self-proclaimed socialist won’t embrace mega-corporatism. The first is that he might not (and probably wouldn’t be) in charge of it. The second is that he believes, beyond reason, that transforming a private person into a government bureaucrat magically transforms him into all-wise, all-knowing, beneficent servants of the people with not wish whatsoever to impose his personal worldview on others.

What about something closer to the current situation, in which important industries are dominated by one firm or a few firms, but those industries compete furiously with each other for consumers’ patronage? That’s a far better situation than the corporate equivalent of state socialism, but it still means that a lot of what becomes available to consumers depends on the whims of corporate bureaucrats and is, at best, sluggishly responsive to consumers’ wants. Overlay it with the heavy hand of government regulation and you get something much closer to state socialism.

The irony of the anti-trust movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s was that it (temporarily) broke up the monopolies of the day, but instituted regulatory agencies that simply (and with greater force) replicated the inefficiencies and unresponsiveness of the monopolies. That is to say, the anti-trust movement (which still has a lot of life in it) brought the U.S. closer to state socialism and the resulting evils of non-competitiveness.

Is there a golden mean of sorts, a combination of orderliness in the small that yields order and efficiency in the large? Classical microeconomic theory posits the perfectly competitive market as the golden mean. The theoretical result of perfect competition is more of everything, which is another way of saying that competition pushes costs down because it squeezes out inefficiency and “excess” profits. But economists recognize that perfect competition is a theoretical ideal that is seldom if ever attainable in the real world, and then only in isolated cases.

Various kinds of less-than-perfect competition — and even monopolies in some industries — are therefore not only inevitable but also desirable from the consumer’s point of view. The massive deadweight losses inflicted by regulation cannot conceivably be worth the theoretical losses resulting from less-than-perfect competition. And regulation is just one aspect of a burdensome control apparatus — government — that has robbed Americans of trillions of dollars over the decades.

The moral of the story: Control what you can if it makes you feel better. Control what you can if it makes your business more profitable. But aside from the obvious things, like controlling crime and foreign enemies, don’t use government to make the world conform to your idea of what it should be like. You’ll only make yourself poorer — and less free.

(See also “Economics: A Survey” and “Putting in Some Good Words for Monopoly“.)

Capitalism, Competition, Prosperity, and Happiness

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Loquitur Veritatem

Capitalism is a misnomer for the system of free markets that could deliver abundant prosperity and happiness, were markets left free. Free does not mean unfettered; competition for the favor of consumers exerts strong discipline on markets. And laws against theft, deception, and fraud would serve amply to keep markets honest, the worrying classes to the contrary notwithstanding.

Capitalism is but one pillar of free markets — an essential pillar, to be sure. But it is competition that drives capitalists, entrepreneurs, managers, and workers alike to excel in the satisfaction of consumers’ wants and to make the best use of resources as they satisfy those wants.

I argue that it is the curtailment of competition, due to the enlargement of government, that has caused the economies of the West to yield much less prosperity than they could, and much less psychic satisfaction than workers, managers, and entrepreneurs (if not to capitalists) would otherwise enjoy.

One reason for the ease with which competition has been stifled is the word’s negative connotation, which seems to hold sway even among millions of Americans who compete gladly for more business, better jobs, and higher incomes. The negative view of competition may date from 1845, when Friedrich Engels wrote these words:

Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules modern civil society. [The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, 1892 edition, p. 75]

Thanks to Engels and his ilk, most notably Karl Marx, competition became and remains a dirty word, with respect to economic activity if not with respect to games, sports, and idiotic TV shows. Economic competition is too much thought of as a brutal contest in which there are relatively few winners and myriad losers.

In fact, economic competition has myriad winners, consumers prominent among them. Adam Smith explained it in 1776:

When the quantity [of a commodity] brought to market exceeds the effectual demand, it cannot be all sold to those who are willing to pay the whole value of the rent, wages, and profit, which must be paid in order to bring it thither. Some part must be sold to those who are willing to pay less, and the low price which they give for it must reduce the price of the whole. [An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Chapter 7]

Consumers benefit not only from competition among the sellers of a particular good or service, but also from competition among the sellers of a variety of goods and services. In the first instance, consumers benefit from lower prices or higher quality when there’s more than one seller of a particular item (or items that are close substitutes, such as compact cars). In the second instance, the availability of a variety of items requires sellers of all of those items to compete for the consumer’s patronage, either on the basis of price or quality (or both). In either case, sellers often compete by offering new and improved goods and services, thus further benefiting consumers.

The owners of a particular business might wish that they had no competition. But even if the wish is seemingly granted (e.g., by crony-friendly regulations that prevent the formation of similar businesses), that business still has to compete with other kinds of businesses for the favor of consumers.

Most consumers are also sellers of their labor. And as sellers, they compete for jobs. Unless government steps in to designate winners (as in the case of affirmative action), labor competition enables employers to hire and promote workers who have seem to have skills and experience best suited to the work at hand. This is a boon to consumers because competition among workers enables the producers of goods and services to get the most “bang” from their labor budgets.

Labor competition is also a boon to workers. Rarely are workers in a situation where they have only one prospective employer. Employers must usually compete against one another for the services of workers. Competitive labor markets — markets that are free of arbitrary government rules and union-imposed restrictions on about hiring and promotion — help workers to find employment for which they are best suited, and help them maximize their income, given their skills and experience.

Again, absent government- and union-imposed restrictions, workers must use their skills and experience productively. If they don’t, they will be fired or at least not promoted beyond the level at which they are worth their pay. If employers are prevented from firing or demoting unproductive workers, better workers are denied opportunities to earn more. And consumers are harmed because they are forced by widely applicable government- and union-imposed restrictions to subsidize the products of inferior labor. The only escape from federal mandates is the substitution of capital for labor, which is why government-imposed minimum wages (among many things) harm the very groups that they are meant to help.

Engels, Marx, and their purportedly empathic successors want to do away with competition because they don’t understand how it helps consumers and workers. The “ideal” alternative to competition is communism (with a small “c”). But communism, like anarchism, is a system that works only for relatively small numbers of like-minded or genetically bonded persons, and then not for long. The only lasting substitute for communism has been state socialism (also known in its more draconian manifestations as Communism with a capital “c”).

State socialism — even in its relatively mild but still heavy-handed American form — decrees the variety of goods and services that may be produced, and restricts their production. This differs in degree but not in kind from Communism, which produced disastrous consequences for the material and psychic well-being of the hundred of millions of persons who labored and still labor under it. (Party leaders, officials, and favorites were and are given special treatment, of course. Elites never disappear, they just assume different titles.)

The false premise of central planners and those who believe in central planning is that a group of persons — even armed with massive computing power — can anticipate and satisfy the vastly varied and ever-changing skills, wants, tastes, and preferences of a diverse populace. All that the central planners can do, at best, is impose their own preferences on others and make some groups (mainly themselves and their favorites) better off at the expense of others.

A bureaucracy which is set on producing X when people want Y will go on producing X for many years after businesses would have shifted to the production of Y. A bureaucracy that stifles innovation (as bureaucracies do) is unlikely to take a chance on introducing Z, which some consumers might prefer to X or Y, but the introduction of Z is what businesses do every day. Nor are stodgy bureaucracies likely to improve their methods of producing X, Y, Z, or anything else, and so they will use labor and other resources in wasteful ways. All for the sake of avoiding what shallow thinkers like to call “wasteful competition.”

It’s ironic that competition (in contexts other than sports, games, and idiotic TV shows) became a dirty word. Most people compete daily without giving it a second thought. It’s simply a matter of doing the best that one can do — or that one is willing to do — and accepting the consequences, or doing better if one is dissatisfied with the consequences. It is gratifying — not demeaning — to meet life’s challenges, and to meet them successfully (or as successfully as one is able).

Engels and Marx’s pseudo-intellectual successors in politics, the academy, and the punditocracy would recognize the truth of this if they were capable of candid introspection. Assuming that they are (sometimes) capable of it, they must believe themselves to be different from (and superior to) the great mass of people, who must be “rescued” from competition. This belief is a compound of psychological projection and condescending hogwash.

Yes, it’s true that most people are willing and eager to get something for nothing. But until the advent of state socialism (also known euphemistically as democratic socialism) most people were unable to get something for nothing. Yes, there have always been those with access to power — like today’s so-called crony capitalists (whose reliance on cronyism disqualifies them as capitalists) — but they were the major exception. Today’s cronies, “capitalist” and other, run the gamut from CEOs of major corporations to physically and mentally able dole collectors to retirees whose productive investments in economic growth have been stunted by the lure (and cost of) “free” Social Security and Medicare benefits.

It needn’t have been thus. The Framers of the Constitution meant to limit the central government’s powers to those sixteen (enumerated in Article I, Section 8) that would “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare.” And the powers of the central government remained within the Framers’ limits for well over a century. But once the government’s powers began to spread beyond their constitutional boundaries, there was no turning back — or so it seems.

The growth of dependency on the state, which in the United States began in earnest with the New Deal, is a cancer that has eaten away the competitive spirit that once animated Americans’ economic striving. The cancer needn’t have taken hold and spread, but it did, thanks to ambitious politicians and know-it-all academicians and pundits, whose siren song of “something for nothing” has lured too many Americans into the arms of the nanny state. And those who have resisted the siren song are nevertheless forced to pay for the “something” that others get for nothing.

Competition is a good word, not a dirty one. It should be praised and emulated, not derided and denigrated. It is at the heart of psychically satisfying and materially enriching economic activity.

* * *

Related reading:

Paul David Miller, “What the Founders Meant by Self-Governance,” The Federalist, December 10, 2013
Paul David Miller, “What Madison Meant by Self-Governance,” The Federalist, December 27, 2013
Paul David Miller, “How Tocqueville Anticipated Our Culture of Dependency,” The Federalist, February 21, 2014

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And guest-blogger L. P.‘s posts about the downside of empathy: here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Competition Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Loquitur Veritatem

Paul Krugman, a defunct Keynesian, certainly isn’t the first person to decry competition. Krugman’s motive is somewhat different than the motives of others who think of competition as a dirty word, so let’s get Krugman out of the way.

Krugman’s ideal world is one in which the great socialist collective operates under the guidance and tutelage of his omniscience, which extends beyond his former discipline of economics into all aspects of human endeavor and the psychological underpinnings thereof. How else could he know, for example, that Republicans are unremittingly evil and the cause of all evil, not excluding the acts of mad men. Krugman’s problem, of course, is his heavy emotional investment in statism, which leads him to respond like Pavlov’s dog (slobbering and all) whenever anyone says an unkind or even doubtful word about the state’s wisdom or beneficence.

Enough of Krugman, as I once said, prematurely. Onward to competition, that dirty word.

Why is it dirty? First, thanks to “thinkers” of Krugman’s ilk, the word has acquired an adjective, which one hears in one’s mind even when it isn’t attached to the word by the person who uses it. The adjective is cut-throat. Cut-throat competition

refers to situations when competition results in prices that do not chronically or for extended periods of time cover costs of production, particularly fixed costs. This may arise in secularly declining or “sick” industries with high levels of excess capacity or where frequent cyclical or random demand downturns are experienced.

In other words, the term cut-throat competition has nothing to do with rapacious behavior. It is simply a picturesque description of a situation in which some firms are bound to fail, leaving survivors whose behavior should be characterized as persevering, not cut-throat. “Cut-throat” has nevertheless become ineradicably associated with “competition,” which has thereby acquired a strongly negative connotation among “average” persons, defunct Keynesians, the mainstream media, and “liberals” in general.

The other negative connotation of competition is its association with zero-sum games. In the extreme, there is gladiatorial, death-to-the-loser combat. In the somewhat less violent entertainments of the present epoch there are season-ending, winner-takes-trophy events: the Stanley Cup playoffs of ice hockey, the World Series of baseball, the Super Bowl of football, and so on, unto the Little League World Series and who knows what else.

The “average” person (Average Joe) enjoys winner-takes-trophy events and movies that employ death-to-the-loser plot devices, even as he deplores economic competition. That is so because competition as entertainment reinforces the view that competition inevitably generates losers. And yet, the competition of the arena — in its modern, non-lethal incarnations — isn’t really about the winner taking all. The winner takes a trophy and some extra moolah, but the losers — even the members of the teams that finish last and never get to post-season play — don’t lose. In fact, they earn rather nice salaries (often stupendous ones), usually for many years before their declining skills cause them to yield (gracefully or otherwise) to younger players.

Average Joe — unlike the athlete, aspiring performer, or trial lawyer — doesn’t like to think that he is in some kind of competition when he goes to work every day. But he is, even if his work doesn’t involve an explicit contest with, say, a co-worker to see who can throw a football more accurately in the face of charging defensive players, write the best computer program, serve the most customers, turn out the most readable technical manuals, and so on.

The element of competition in the workaday world is unavoidable, not only for the workers on the front lines but also for those in the back room. It is also inevitable for bosses all the way up the chain of command, and for financial backers (whose ownership shares and and loans are on the line).

The element of competition arises because of consumer sovereignty. In the final analysis, it is up to producers (workers, bosses, and business owners) to satisfy consumers — who are also producers. Every instant of every day there are changes in tastes, preferences, technologies, production methods, and other factors that determine the characteristics, quantities, and prices of goods and services that are bought and sold, and thus the rewards to those who are engaged in the production and financing of those goods and services. All of that constant change takes place in an economy that is generally growing, and some sectors of which grow even as others sink into recession or depression. Growth does not eliminate or soften competition because, when the veil of money is stripped away, growth depends heavily on the addition of resources (labor and capital of various kinds), which must be rewarded in accordance with the value of their contributions to economic output. Whether or not the economy is growing, the earnings of producers (and, therefore, their opportunities to consume) depend on their ability to satisfy consumers, who have myriad choices about how to allocate their incomes. In turn, the incomes of every economic actor, from janitor to chairman of the board to multi-billionaire shareholder, are determined by their respective contributions to consumer satisfaction.

The outcome of competition, contrary to the connotations of the word, isn’t a tally of winners and losers. Every “player” is a winner because he is rewarded, to some degree, for his efforts. The notion that there are winners and losers arises, wrongly, from the assumption that everyone is entitled to the same reward, regardless of how valuable his contribution is to others. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs” is a long-discredited economic philosophy that leads to less for everyone (politicians, bureaucrats, and their favorites excepted). A low-income wage-earner may envy a Warren Buffet or Bill Gates (though that envy seems not to extend to the wage-earner’s favorite, highly paid athletes), but envy is in such ample supply that it is worthless, except when politicians decide to reward it, in the name of (cheap) compassion.

Which brings me to the political side of the story. It is the inevitability of competition — and the unwonted fear of it — that leads individuals and groups to seek shelter from it. Moreover, the general perception of competition as “bad” makes it easier for government to usurp private functions and set up in their place nearly impregnable bureaucracies. As a result of these impulses and perceptions, almost every product and service is made more costly by regulatory restrictions, licensing laws, import restrictions, tariffs, pro-union legislation, affirmative-action laws (which raise production costs by forcing employers to hire and promote second-best employees), and so on. At the same, the ability of consumers (as voters) to remove the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for such depredations is inhibited by civil-service regulations (which protect incompetent bureaucrats from more than mere changes of administration) and campaign-finance laws (which were designed by incumbents to protect their incumbencies).

All of this comes at a high cost to those Americans who must actually compete in the real economy. Average Joe doesn’t lose because of competition, he loses because so many of his fellow Americans have succeeded in insulating themselves from it. Therein lies true greed.

In summary, competition is a great thing. By rewarding invention, innovation, risk-taking, education and training, hard work, and all of the other things that contribute to economic growth. competition enables us — all of us — to enjoy a higher standard of living. And we would be much better off they we are if there were fewer individuals sitting on the sidelines, watching the competitors and taking an unearned cut of their earnings.

There’s nothing wrong with competition but the connotations it has acquired. It shouldn’t be a dirty word.

Monopoly: Private Is Better than Public

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Loquitur Veritatem

In this discursive post, I use the economic concept of perfect competition as a starting point from which to defend monopoly and to expose the folly and futility of governmental intervention in markets.

PERFECT COMPETITION AS A BOGUS STANDARD

I learned, in the standard microeconomics of my college days, that perfect competition is preferred to these three alternatives:

imperfect competition, where there is some degree of product differentiation (real or perceived)

oligopoly, where a particular product or service is sold by only a few firms (“product or service” is hereafter called “good,” in keeping with economic jargon)

monopoly, where there is only one seller of a particular good.

The theoretical superiority of perfect competition rests on the belief that, compared with the alternatives, it yields the greatest output of goods and, therefore, the greatest degree of satisfaction to consumers; that is, perfect competition maximizes “social welfare.”

The standard analysis has many problems, the most fundamental of which is the observation selection effect. The observer, in this case, is the economist who views the world through the lenses of economic efficiency and “social welfare.”

The construct of economic efficiency involves gross generalizations about economic reality, which are based on ideal firms in an ideal world, not on the behavior of real firms in the messy world of reality. The construct, in other words, sets up an ideal world of perfect competition, divergences from which are judged less than optimal — as if unavoidable, real-world divergences are less valid than the perfections of an imaginary construct. (This is an instance of a Nirvana fallacy, “the logical error of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives.”)

Then there is “social welfare,” which perfect competition is purported to maximize. “Social welfare” is in fact a fictitious device whereby the person who invokes it assumes (implicitly if not explicitly) that the happiness of individuals can be summed, and that he knows just how to do it. The predictable result of “social arithmetic” is a call for some kind of governmental action that effectively redistributes income; for example:

Affirmative action, on balance, redistributes income from shareholders, consumers, and more-qualified workers to less-qualified workers.

Progressive taxation redistributes income from persons who earn a lot of money (the job-creators of the economy) to persons who earn less money. It also drives out high earners, to the detriment of the rest of us.

Trust-busting (which is of particular interest here) amounts to a redistribution of income from the owners of a oligopolistic or monopolistic firm to consumers.

“Social welfare,” in other words, is a phony excuse for playing God — a variant of the Nirvana fallacy. (For more, see this, this, and this.)

HOW GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD

Why is it not a good thing for government to act in ways that redistribute income from the owners of firms to consumers? There are several reasons, beginning with the artificiality of perfect competition (or something like it) as a model of how markets ought to be organized.

Then, there is the arrogance of a mindset that judges consumers to be more deserving that the owners of businesses — owners who staked a lot of money (and created jobs) on business ventures that might have gone sour (and often do). Is it possible that trust-busting discourages business (and job) formation? You can bet on it.

Related to that, it is necessary to remember that business owners are humans, too — 160 years of communist-populist-“progressive“-“liberal” rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. Business owners’ desire for profit is no less legitimate than consumers’ desire for low prices. Government is in the business of penalizing oligopolistic and monopolistic business owners not only because economists have set up a false standard (perfect competition or something like it), but also because the act of penalizing appeals to the envy of many voters and interest groups toward persons with legitimately high incomes. Trust-busting is neither logically nor morally admirable.

It is true that not all industries lend themselves to perfect competition or something like it, but it is neither necessary nor desirable to regulate firms in industries that are characterized by oligopoly and monopoly. (pace Paul Krugman). Oligopoly and monopoly are not iron-clad. Consumers have alternatives: If the price of X is “too high” they can (and will) buy more of Y and Z; if the price of X rises a lot, relative to the prices of Y and Z, the producer of X is likely to find himself with a direct competitor. In the alternative, more consumers will abandon X in favor of Y and Z.

TWO EMOTION-LADEN CASES

What about situations in which there seem to be no ready substitutes for a particular good? Lurking behind this question are fears of private monopolies controlling the supplis of water and medical goods. The case of medical goods is more straightforward, so I will deal with it before considering the supply of water.

Medicine

The supply of medical goods already is artificially low because of government, not in spite of it. Who licenses doctors and grants the A.M.A. a near-monopoly on the accreditation of medical schools? Who licenses and regulates hospitals? Who approves drugs and licenses pharmacists? The list of questions could go on and on, but the answer is always the same: government.

The average person will react along these lines: “Government has to be involved in the provision of medical goods, otherwise we would be taking our lives in our hands every time we go to a doctor or a hospital, and every time we use a drug.” I respond as follows:

The main effect of government regulation of certain goods (including medical ones) is to raise the cost of those goods by imposing costs on their providers and effectively barring additional providers from setting up shop. This unseen cost means that Americans consumer fewer medical goods than they would if government weren’t imposing costs on providers and barring prospective providers. (There is an argument that Americans, on balance, consume more medical goods than necessary because of Medicare, Medicaid, and tax-exempt, employer-subsidized health insurance. But given those distortions, it is true that regulation raises costs and restricts entry.) Is it possible that the net effect of regulations is to make Americans worse off rather than better off? A good case can be made for that proposition. (See this, this, and this.) The case of medical goods exemplifies Bastiat’s axiom that

a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

Water: The Hardest Case

No Inherent Need for Government Intervention

If the debate about government’s role in medicine evokes much emotion and little reason, any discussion of privatizing the water supply is certain to elicit the rawest of emotions: fear. A typical reaction goes like this: “If government doesn’t provide our water, greedy speculators will corner the market and we’ll all be at their mercy.” It is hard to imagine such a reaction in the 1800s, when a large fraction of the population lived in rural areas, where most water came from privately owned wells or was taken, by private means, from rivers and lakes. Government doesn’t have to provide water, and if it couldn’t stop a you from drilling a well in your backyard (which it can, thanks to its “police power”) many urbanites and suburbanites might be able to supply their own water.

In any event, there is no inherent reason for government to supply water. The simple fact is that “municipal water works” has acquired the totemic status of “public schools.” Both institutions have become so embedded that private alternatives (on a large scale) were unthinkable, until (in the case of public schools) failure became so obvious that it could no longer be ignored. (That the dominant solution to the failure of public schools is to throw more money at them is neither a negation of their failure nor of the widespread perception of failure.)

Scenario 1: “Accidental” Private Monopoly

Given that there is no inherent reason for government to provide water, I begin the analysis of water monopolies with the following hypothetical:

We have with a small, settled community of 25 homes, in which every home has a well (and has had one for generations). It is accepted by all members of the community that each homeowner is the owner of his well; that is, wells are not communal property. Further, every well provides an ample amount of water for such purposes as drinking, bathing, cooking, watering lawns and gardens, washing cars, etc.

Suddenly, because of some unforeseeable geological change, every well but one runs dry. And the owners of the 24 homes without functioning wells (the unlucky 24″) have no immediate or easy recourse to another source of water — a spring, stream, or lake — because there are none within a day’s drive of the community. The only convenient source of water is the 25th home (“lucky 25”), whose well seems to provide more than enough water for its owner — enough, in fact, to meet the drinking, bathing, and cooking needs of the “unlucky 24.”

Issues Arising from Scenario 1

How should the “unlucky 24” cope with the near-term problem of obtaining water for drinking, bathing, and cooking? Suppose that they have two practical options:

Appeal to “lucky 25” by offering him a price for water that would just cover the cost of providing it (electricity, pump repairs/replacements, etc.).

Buy water in large quantities from an out-of-area vendor — at a much higher price than they would offer “lucky 25.”

“Lucky 25,” the accidental water monopolist, has the following options:

Accept the offer made by the “unlucky 24.”

Make a counter-offer by setting a price that is somewhere between the offer made by the “unlucky 24” and the cost, to them, of buying water from an out-of-area vendor.

Refuse to sell water to the “unlucky 24,” for one of the following reasons: (1) It is his right to do so. (2) He doesn’t want to be in the water-selling business, with its attendant distractions. (3) He fears that drawing significantly greater amounts of water from his well will cause it to run dry.

(You should understand that this is a law-abiding community whose residents are respectful of property rights — unlike the typical government — so that the water monopolist doesn’t have to worry about defending his well and himself against a mob.)

I daresay that the average reader would expect “lucky 25” to accept the offer made by the “unlucky 24.” But why should the accidental water monopolist accept the offer? He might, out of compassion, help the “unlucky 24” while they make other arrangements. But his help would be given out of compassion, not obligation.

The Permissibility of “Good Luck”

Yes, the water monopolist may have been “lucky” with respect to water, but perhaps he has been “unlucky” in other respects. Why, if “luck” determines one’s obligations to others, shouldn’t the water monopolist’s neighbors compensate him for his episodes of “bad luck” — the dog that was hit by a car, the underground stream which provides him ample water but threatens to undermine the foundation of his house, an errant wife, incorrigible children, etc.? Must “good luck” be penalized or paid for, as an act of “social justice”?

The answer is “no.” Anthony de Jasay explains, in “Economic Theories of Social Justice: Risk, Value, and Externality“:

Stripped of rhetoric, an act of social justice (a) deliberately increases the relative share … of the worse-off in total income, and (b) in achieving (a) it redresses part or all of an injustice…. This implies that some people being worse off than others is an injustice and that it must be redressed. However, redress can only be effected at the expense of the better-off; but it is not evident that they have committed the injustice in the first place. Consequently, nor is it clear why the better-off should be under an obligation to redress it….

Since Nature never stops throwing good luck at some and bad luck at others, no sooner are [social] injustices redressed than some people are again better off than others. An economy of voluntary exchanges is inherently inegalitarian…. Striving for social justice, then, turns out to be a ceaseless combat against luck, a striving for the unattainable, sterilized economy that has built-in mechanisms…for offsetting the misdeeds of Nature.

Scenario 2: Deliberate Water Monopoly

Suppose, now, that our water monopolist came by his monopoly in an entirely different way — a way that (to most of us) seems to draw on entrepreneurship, not “luck.” Suppose that he (and he alone) drilled a well for the purpose of selling water to his neighbors, whom (he knows and they know) cannot (and never could) find water under their properties. What should the water monopolist charge his neighbors for water? Just as much as they are willing to pay, of course. Is there anything immoral in that? If there is, why is it not immoral for an auto dealer to sell you a car for just as much as you are willing to pay, even if you need that car in order to earn a living?

Why should the water monopolist (or car dealer or anyone else) be forced by a legalized mob (i.e., government) to sell his product for a prescribed price, when he is the person who took the financial risk of drilling a well, not knowing for certain that he would strike water, at what rate it would flow, how long it would flow at that rate, and whether another source of water might materialize because of unforeseeable geological or climatological changes?

The answer to the question is found in emotion, not reason. Emotionally, we hold water to be more precious than, say, automobiles. Yet, many persons consume a lot of water for what might be called non-essential reasons (e.g., watering lawns, washing cars, filling swimming pools), and many persons need cars in order to earn a living. Water, stripped of its emotional baggage, isn’t a sacred commodity; it is merely a commodity that has different prices in different places.

Which brings us to the essential question: Who should supply water?

Why a Government Monopoly Is Worse

Perhaps government should be in the business of telling everyone what kind of cars they can have (or not have). (Not far-fetched, admittedly.) Well, then, perhaps government should be in the business of telling us whom to marry, how many children to have, where to live, etc., etc., etc. If that’s an unappealing prospect, why step down the slippery slope toward it by allowing government to dictate the price of water, as it does by controlling most of the nation’s water supply through municipal and regional water authorities?

What can government do that entrepreneurs cannot? The answer is nothing, except to set prices for water that are unlikely to correspond to the prices that would be set by voluntary transactions between private sellers and their customers. Government monopolies prohibit entry where entry would be possible, for example, along large rivers and around large lakes.

Government monopolies cannot respond quickly, if at all, to changes in costs and variations in demand. The prices set by government monopolies must therefore result in the subsidization of some consumers who would be willing to pay more for their water by taxpayers and/or other consumers who are paying more than they would pay if there were private, competing suppliers of water.

What about the poor persons who, without subsidization, could not afford water for drinking, bathing, and cooking, unless they were to forgo other necessities (e.g., medical care)? So, the market for water should be monopolized by government and the price of water should be distorted for the sake of a relatively small fraction of the population? It would be better to rely on (a) private charity and (if you insist) (b) tax-funded vouchers for the purchase of water.

Scenario 3: Government vs. Private Pricing

Which leads to the next objection to the privatization of the water supply (which was mostly private for a long time in the United States). It goes like this: “Water monopolists would bleed their customers dry; they would conspire to control the supply of water and charge whatever the market will bear.”

To test those assertions, let us consider the extreme case in which the residents of a mountainous area have only one potential source of water (other than rain), which is a river that flows through the area. Suppose “greedy speculator” buys the land surround the river’s source and dams the river, at a place on his land. (I am ignoring, for purposes of this post, the state of the law regarding such a practice.) “Greedy speculator” then pays for the installation of water pipes to various of his customers, meters their use of water, and charges them (perhaps at different rates) in such a way as to maximize his profit.

If you have been following along, you will have realized that there’ is no difference between “greedy speculator” and government, where it declares a local monopoly on the supply of water. There is, of course, a degree of (misplaced) trust in government, that is, trust that will “do the right thing,” which means robbing Peter to pay Paul. That trust amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking about government and misconceptions about the benefits of private action, spurred by the prospects of profit.

In the case of water, for example, government may not build enough capacity (to the detriment of consumers), it may build too much capacity (at the expense of taxpayers), or it may fail to keep its system in good repair (to the detriment of consumers). Private, unregulated providers, in the more usual instances where some degree of competition is possible, can respond more quickly than government to rises in demand, are less likely than government to overbuild, and are more likely than government to keep their systems in good repair.

But the provision of water a natural monopoly, is it not? That question (with its the implied answer: “yes”) arises from the belief that there is no room in a market for more than one supplier where an extensive infrastructure must be duplicated (as in the case of water plants and supply pipes). There are market solutions to such seemingly insurmountable problems, although — in the cases of electricity, natural gas, and cable TV — their implementation generally has been botched by regulatory incompetence and intent.

How could there be competition in a market for water? Consider the extreme case of “greedy speculator” who buy the land from which a river rises, and dams the river. If he sets the price of water too high, three things could happen:

Some residents self-ration, reducing or eliminating the use of water for such things as watering lawns, washing cars, and filling swimming pools. (Remember, my example involves a “speculator” who is interested in making a reasonable return on a large investment, which requires that he set up shop in place that isn’t destitute.)

Some residents leave the area for places where their total cost of living, relative to income, is lower than it becomes after “greedy speculator” sets up shop.

Competition arrives in the form of a supplier who hauls water in large tank trucks and installs a water storage tank for each of the homes and businesses that subscribe to his service.

Lo and behold, “greedy speculator” forestalls competition, and perhaps some departures from the area, by setting his price “just high enough.” Is that fair?

Still No Role for Government

Well, ask yourself if it’s fair of government to keep a private individual from earning a profit by providing a product of value to consumers, or to restrict that profit in the “public interest.” Ask yourself if it is fair that such practices on the part of government lead to a general reduction in the willingness of entrepreneurs to establish and expand job- and growth-producing businesses of all kinds. (Remember “that which is not seen.”) Ask yourself if it is fair of government to circumvent the private sector and provide taxpayer-subsidized goods and services to the residents of an area, just because it lacks “good” supplies of water or electricity, or just because it is frequently and predictably devastated by fires, floods, hurricanes, or tornadoes. Ask yourself if it is fair of government to provide taxpayer-funded insurance against predictable natural disasters when private insurers won’t do so — with the result that the areas prone to natural disasters remain heavily inhabited, at taxpayers’ expense.

In other words, private action — however competitive or uncompetitive — alleviates a host of problems. Government action tends to exacerbate those problems, and to create unforeseen (and unseen) ones.

CONCLUSION

It is written nowhere (but in the imaginations of statists) that government owes us a green lawn, a residence on a flood plain, or anything else but protection from predators, foreign and domestic. As soon as government strays beyond its proper role, it begins to corrupt civil society and its essential mechanisms, which include free markets.

One of the ways in which government strays is to interfere in markets and to provide services that can be and should be provided through markets. Government — at the behest of politicians, bureaucrats, academicians, and meddlers-at-large — interferes in markets and sometimes becomes a provider on the pretext that certain markets (most of them, it seems) are insufficiently competitive or otherwise have “failed” because they fall short of measures of perfection devised by — you guessed it — politicians, bureaucrats, academicians, and meddlers-at-large.

Government intervention in markets exacts a very high price, in liberty and material goods. It strips us of the ability to do for ourselves what we think needs to be done — as opposed to what some politician, other meddler, or “aggrieved” group believes we ought to do or have done to us. It strips us — even the poorest among us — of the means to do for ourselves that which we need to do. It strips us — even the poorest among us — of the fruits of those labors which are permitted to us. The degree of theft is so vast as to be unimaginable, but unseen and therefore (mostly) unlamented.

The bottom line: Private monopolies are superior to public ones, and should not be persecuted or prosecuted. Government monopolies are for the benefit of politicians, bureaucrats, academicians, meddlers-at-large, and the the majority of citizens who have been conned into believing that government action is preferable to private action.

Politics and Prosperity

“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”

Tag Archives: competition

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Capitalism, Competition, Prosperity, and Happiness

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