In a market-based economy business legacies are forced to survive on their merits. Not so in Capitalist environs where the siege of survival is based on the conquest of market control and not market efficiencies. The physiology of this is proven by one undeniable fact: Capitalists are, by nature, Monopolists because they loath the competitive dynamics of a market-based economic structure where the demand side (the Consumer) articulates success or failure of an enterprise based on their satisfaction. The Monopolists (side) dictates survivability based solely on the choices they choose (including pricing) to make available.
Rarely, and I can’t think of one that has, do mergers advance the efficiencies and breadth of the Consumer choice; more often than not they are merely the merger of one or a combination of the following:
(1) A dominant enterprise finding it more favorable to acquire an interest than to create the same on its own.
(2) Enterprises who, having failed to develop a pro-generative business model, calculate a course-of-least effort by way of merging with enterprises of similar kinetic-loss hoping that their newly found market-footprint will extend their ability to feed upon the marketplace.
Trump is correct in his assessment of the AT&T/Time Warner deal, even if only to the extent of the “choices made available” side of the margin however, there are far more telling attributes to the recent rage in mergers that is largely ignored. For example: In the case of the Bayer/Monsanto merger there is one key attribute of their plan that continues to go seemingly unnoticed. The E.U. strictly prohibits Bayer from introducing GMO products into the European market. A Bayer-Monsanto merger would create a vehicle that would allow Bayer, thru its U.S. Subsidiary (Monsanto), a major market force in genetically engineered seed-stock. A fast-track and ready source of GMO product made even more potent should the Trans-Atlantic Trade Agreement go forward. If so, there will be absolutely no way for the E.U. to blockade GMO introduction into the Euro-sphere.
This is an example where collusion, among corporate and government interests, is used as a forced-penetration tool and/or as an extension of monopolistic mechanisms purposefully designed for defeating market-based forces. In short and simple terms, if Henry Ford could have acquired Chevrolet you’d still be driving a black Model-T. If Westinghouse and G.E. would have been prevented from confining their development to the singularity of uranium-based reactor technology, then it is more likely that the far more efficient and near zero reactive waste of Thorium-based reactor technology would have been used and there’d be no need for coal or gas fired plants (for electricity) or the toxic bi-product of radioactive materials.
Although Hillary would like you to think that Trump, by his use of “Chinese steel”, is a contributory factor in the forced adaptation to the cannibalism of the Global Economy, the facts illustrate a far different scenario. You must see her comments both as a demonstration of her economic ignorance and evidence of the Capitalists monopolistic underbelly where the choices you have to choose from are confined to the choice made available. To me, that’s not a choice we should ever be prepared to accept.
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
