DISQUS

eee_eff · 1 year ago

"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens."

eee_eff · 1 year ago

True enough – and that’s why so many on the left are off-base when they assume that being pro-market and being pro-big business are the same thing.

It is very rarely the left that have trouble with this concept, but usually the right, who frequently disguise their pro-business (and pro-big consolidated business, to be more precise) with all kinds of pro-market rhetoric, which they abandon immediately when it does not suit their paymasters.

Exhibit No. 1: Progress and Freedom Foundation, and those posters at IPCentral who are determined to give away freedom to obtain a little economic benefit.