[PLUG-TALK] The Corner Newsletter: The beleaguered railroad industry investigation (fwd)

[Paul Heinlein]

On Thu, 1 Dec 2022, Rich Shepard wrote:

>> We should not let financial people tell us what's good for the economy;
>> they do not have the economy's well being close to their hearts.
>
> Implementing these controls, unfortunately, is the sticking point.

Those controls were, in part, meant to be implemented via anti-trust 
statutes, regulations, and enforcement.

Unfortunately, perhaps disastrously, the US government has 
effectively failed to enforce anti-trust rules for well over a 
generation at this point. Doing so decreases incentives for market 
competition, stagnates the labor market, increases the barriers to 
entry for market newcomers, and consolidates capital and market 
control in just a few hands.

All because the large-enterprise community has convinced large 
portions of the American public that

* in a free market, any gov't regulation is probably a bad one,
* good finance (for large enterprises) equates to a good economy.

(In reality, established enterprises love those gov't regulation that 
increase the legal and compliance costs for any competitor who wants 
to enter the market. But that's a different side of the story.)

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°22'48" N, 122°35'36" W