This is how seductive seeing society as an economy is. I don’t actually think more competition is the answer…

This is how seductive seeing society as an economy is. I don’t actually think more competition is the answer to grocery prices. That’s part of the mythology of market economies, that they operate via competition, adopted by all sides as an unproblematic baseline. /1 https://t.co/gvCVdlpM54

Notice we actually have to *regulate* to get competition. Market theory suggests this should be the default state, unless regulation (‘red tape’) interferes. But competition only ever exists through regulation. And even then, what does it achieve? /2

It breaks up the economies of scale in business, which is what actually can lead to things becoming cheaper. It pulverises established scale to feed this fantasy of market competition. We set up competition regulators, to enforce competition. To regulate it into existence. /3

Because, the fantasy goes, this will make things operate as optimum markets. Things that are supposed to be a default state, which red tape regulation gets in the way of. We see it with private health insurance, such a hopeless product that government legislation is used…/4

…to force people to take it up, so somebody’s ideological wet dream of competition is fulfilled. Meanwhile, prices for health care keep going up. Something only single-payer (‘universal’) health care has ever managed to reverse. And what’s single-payer health care? /5

A ‘monopoly’! The worst evil in a market economy. Except it’s the only thing that drives prices down, through economies of scale. ‘The economy’ is layer upon layer of completely contradictory bullshit. /end