As you may have noticed from my posts, I'm a big fan of capitalism. I also believe that one of the responsibilities government has in a capitalist economy is to break up unnatural monopolies and regulate natural ones. (I'm going to use monopoly for all collectivist economic structures here - cartels, monopolies, duopolies, etc). However, repeatedly, we have seen regulatory capture, where the monopolies just pay off any (government) intervention - and often guide the government into strengthening their power position.
That's a problem, for freedom and for a sound economy. I have argued previously that collectivist practices in management (executives) leads to collectivist practices in workers. We saw this in the auto industry - when a town only has one business, the only way for workers to get their fair share is to unionize. But this holds true if a cartel forms, too. Let's say there are three auto makers. If management does not collaborate, there is constant competition to fairly compensate employees (also known as competition for the best talent) - the best managers are also rewarded as customers choose the best product. However, if the companies conspire against the workers to, for example, cap pay, you will likely see guilds form to compensate for the collectivist activities of the executives.
I see this phenomenon playing out now where we have the collectivist financial elites and large powerful unions take center stage as the economy collapses.
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