Regulation and the planned economy

A very intemperate post from me on a very stupid article in New Zealand on competition and regulation.

This is a guy whose belief in "freedom" runs to his freedom to be exploited by monopolists.

I wrote in part;

When New Zealand was the global darling of economic turn around it wasn't from abandoning the law or regulation as such, but from introducing competition. New Zealand is allowing itself to "go soft" by listening to the bleating of its large firms.

There is no part of improving one's global competitiveness by reducing competition at home that can ever be justified. New Zealand might just be still getting away with it in dairy.

But riddle me this, if just one or two large firms, or even a cartel of firms provides global competitiveness, then a centrally planned economy is the way to go. With no local market competition you aren't getting the price system to do anything.

Letting domestic firms get fat dumb and happy on monopoly rents is no incentive to go compete.