When at middle school, some few years ago now, monitors would troll the break-rooms, corridors and playgrounds. If a bully or bully-like behavior was observed, a faithful monitor (sometimes of a more diminutive size) would wade in to neutralize the issue. In industry, economic bullies are getting larger and more powerful and the monitors are missing in action.
What we knew was happening in America is now clearly happening in the UK. In this week’s Economist there is an article titled, “More money, more problems” in the business section. The article reports on new research that suggests industry concentration is well established and getting more pronounced; large, dominant firms are getting larger and more dominant. As a result, a greater proportion of economic profits are being hovered up by the bullies and the rest of each industry is sucking on less and less.
If the market was operating efficiently and freely, the opportunity for start-ups to innovate and create the ‘next big thing’ would help foster creative destruction. But public policy has played a key part in (over?) regulating how business start and operate; and lobbying is running rampant such that, more clearly in America, firms with deeper chests can invest in lobbyists to ensure their masters’ interests are protected; putting more pressure in the smaller guys. The monitors have become the employees of the bullies.
There are implications a-many, some reported in the Economist article, touching innovation and its diffusion (or lack thereof), wage rates, productivity and employment. Larger firms tend to achieve higher degrees of economy of scale; this is a large playground where automation can help drive productivity thus helping the bullies get stronger. Other data from the OECD and other sources suggest that diffusion of knowledge and ideas, needed to help firms share in productivity-inducing work, is slowing down between innovators and followers; in other words between those who already have, and those that already don’t. This reinforces industry concentration or the barriers around the OECD’s ‘frontier firms’.
Employment opportunities and where we collectively go to work changes; and who is able to pay a higher wage becomes self evident. So all in all the controlled environment we live in is a far cry from the free market that was operating 20 or more years ago.
It seems the pundits feel that we need more competition. Can we legislate for more competition or can we undo the constraints that put us where we are today? I think that what is needed is:
- Less regulation overall and particularly on small and medium business, spanning financials, hiring practices, IP development, and so on
- Increase investment in primary R&D
- Increase vocational collaboration with education and industry
- If you want more regulation, point it at the lobbyists: reduce their spend and power
- Tinker with the tax code to help motivate investment in smaller firms and Tomory for it, tax larger firms more.
But these items are not even popular topics in politics today. It’s much more likely we will talk about fake news and Russians and Facebook, than economics, growth and hard work. Oh well.