Tag: Competition

If I had a million pounds for every time I have heard a possible reform opposed because “it wouldn’t have prevented Northern Rock or Lehman Brothers going bust”, I might now have enough money to bail out a bank.

Modern life involves complex and multidimensional products. It is perhaps inevitable that price structures appear similarly complex and multidimensional.

Humans have always found it hard to cope with the idea that every individual has a lifespan even as life itself goes on. The idea of a natural life cycle for a business, or industrial centre, is even more difficult to accept.

Some complexity is unavoidable, but much of the complexity consumers experience is not.

Effective banking reform should aim at structures, not at intensified supervision. Resilient systems are simple ones.

Plurality and diversity are generally sources of stability – in banking as in nature.

Adam Smith had not imagined a world in which the Wealth of Nations would cross the world digitally at the click of a mouse. Nor had he envisaged one in which legislation would be drafted by paid lobbyists.

If the winner of the competitive race is the company that is most innovative, not in productive efficiency or customer service, but in the ingenuity and opacity of its tariff structures, consumers will not be happy, or well served, in the long run.

The dynamism of a market economy comes from innovation in products and processes, and radical innovation in products and processes often – in fact usually – comes from outside the existing market structure.

The books that Britain exports have long been made from trees grown abroad. Then globalisation meant the paper was also made abroad, and increasingly the printing took place overseas. Soon selling a book will involve no physical objects. The division of labour becomes ever finer and generally increases the wealth of all involved in the production process.