Forum Post: Hidden monopolies, corporations and regulations: proposals

In 1998 the United States Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states filed a civil action against Microsoft Corporation for abuse of monopoly power for Microsoft Explorer browser.

The “free market” is not something the corporations want. There is need for regulation to preserve it. If free market is wildlife, corporations are hunters. Now, globalization has smoothen the concept of monopoly and there are actual monopolies that can be hidden formally, but real in the entire nation.

Globalization also allowed corporation to grow in power and acquire more leverage than the congress itself. Highly powerful individuals on top of corporations have now means to trawl billions out of the real economy. In the long run this makes most of the people poorer and a few richer, breaking a wealth economy into a developing-country economy.

Regulation is now needed to prevent this. To preserve economy and free market.

I think regulations should be something like:

• Strengthen the antitrust tools for fighting the abuse of monopoly power or abuse of dominant postion. This should be enforced in the whole supply chain verifying the control over prices imposed by corporations (for example vs farmers). Companies acquisition should avoid the constitution of actual monopolies or controlled markets.

• Constrain Wall Street speculation. Return to a prudent banking, reintroduce the Glass–Steagall Act, or other similar regulation tools.

• Rebuild the broken link between salary and responsibility. Ceil the higher salary to a maximum amount that depends upon the minimum paid salary. Bigger salary is for bigger responsibilities, if a CEO messes up or act in its own interest at expenses of the company interest, he should responsible in fist person with his/her personal belongings. If the company does not enforce that, it is an “abuse of dominant position” of the individual over the company, over the salaries of the 99% oter employees. It should be a matter of antitrust to investigate why the company did not pursued its interests.

• Corporations net revenues that exceed a given amount should be redistributed to the low-paid employees. That amount should be proportional to lowest salary. This would mean that if company cannot make 10 billions by underpaying their employees, or it could be investigated by antitrust. In a bad economy, job offering can present a consition of abuse of dominant position.

Companies have been invented by man and woman to improve living. They are made to create wealth for families. They were not meant to be a tool for trawling money out of society into closed channels. This is no longer sustainable, and regulation is now needed to return to a wealth economy. The power of a few billionaires currently overwhelm the whole country democratic power. This kind of government was not foreseen by the constitution.