People who say they don’t want free markets, or who say they want to reduce or eliminate competition, are really just people who want to eliminate the virtues of service, freedom, prosperity and choice.
Competition is a by-product. It’s not something desirable in itself – it’s just what happens when other desirable things happen.
Competition comes about when three conditions hold.
1. People are free to serve others. That is, they are free to provide labor on behalf of other people, to make others lives better. This condition contains the converse – that people are also free to receive service from others, without intervention/prevention from others.
2. People are free to exchange services with one another in ways that mutually benefit them.
3. People are free to decide between any number of servers/services offered the one that they prefer and feel will most benefit them.
When these conditions hold, what you have is groups of people working for the opportunity to serve one another and offering more and more in exchange for the privilege of being chosen to give the service. In return for the service, they also receive service (or goods, usually in the form of money) in return.
When people who offer the same service make themselves available simultaneously, the person receiving service has the choice to choose the provider they believe will serve them best. The two service providers will each work and improve to be able to provide the service. The net result is that the person served will be able to exchange, perhaps, fewer services in return than may have been necessary. This is a benefit to the receiver – it means he has that much more service to exchange later for additional services he otherwise might not have been able to “purchase”.
Competition is nothing more than the result of allowing people to freely serve one another and allowing those served the freedom to choose those servers/services that they feel will best serve them.
Any effort to reduce “competition” must NECESSARILY do one or more of the following to the three conditions.
1. Take away people’s freedom to serve one another; that is, to disallow or prohibit service
2. Take away people’s freedom to voluntarily trade service with each other
3. Take away people’s freedom to choose between providers of services and instead mandate that if they want the service at all they must use just one provider (which they did not choose).
People who want to do away with free markets or competition are really just people who want to eliminate service, freedom, prosperity, and choice.
Nice people!
February 3rd, 2011 at 10:08 am
Well said. But there are some issues that need resolved with healthcare. A person with insurance should not be paying more out of pocket money for a health service than someone who has no insurance at all. There is nothing competitive about this at all.