4 Corners excited some last night because it went into bat for their team. The ‘big corporate market power…

4 Corners excited some last night because it went into bat for their team. The ‘big corporate market power price gouging’ team. Except none of it made sense. Nobody asks how you get power in a market, which is supposed to be a mechanism to get rid of it. /1

Or why everybody doesn’t just go to Aldi instead, which is cheaper. Nobody forces anybody to shop at the evil duopoly. Nor to bank with the Big 4 banks. But most people still do. None of this is explained. At one point the story talks about how low prices for fruit and veg…/2

…are destroying growers. But this ran obviously against the narrative of price gouging, something again that wasn’t noted or explained. No analysis, just re-hashing the daily team sports of public debate. It made people FEEL good, on some teams. /3

Nobody asks why we need regulation, legislation and regulators, to enforce competition, something that the fantasy of markets says is the default way humans behave, if unregulated. Or asks why in markets like housing lots of competition creates exponential price *increases*. /4

We don’t think, we emote. Everything is The Ashes or State of Origin (more ‘duopolies’) for us, team sports. We LOVE big battles between two teams, like Coles and Woolies. That’s why they exist. And why most still shop there, even though it’s cheaper down the road. /end