The current form of the market economy is oligopolistic where a few numbers of elite oligarchies secure their dominance. This is because that they can take an advantage of their huge economies of scale basing their factors of production which enables them to drastically expand their quantity and brand name of their products superior to those smaller rivals. Although their offering goods and services with their high quality and fast speed are beneficial for the majority individuals to enjoy, the market entry for any new entrant to compete with these already established corporations has become significantly more discouraged than the past. In another word, the world socio-economy basing these individuals' life is then more dependent on these corporate oligarchies staying in the market for a long term.
The social mobility of individuals nowadays is more discouraged than a few decades ago because there is a huge gap between those who are fortunate enough to obtain the skill-sets required by the market and the others not fortunate enough. Each individual's own competence, effort, and motivation are no longer enough to outperform in the current market competition because it requires the significantly higher financial and time costs to secure their competitive advantage than the past. It is not only the matter of material well-beings but also the accessible information available in their living community determine their fortune of acquiring their initiative. Therefore, it requires the public management to offer a certain degree of the equality in outcome to accomplish the equality in opportunity.
The good old days of the laissez-faire free market capitalism are gone. Instead, the more static socioeconomic political form of the corporate capitalism has come. Rather than the free-minded courageous individual economic agents, the already established aristocrats called corporate shareholders and government bureaucrats secure their dominance. Majority individuals now belong to one big institute of either corporation or government. Even small/medium sized business owners are working under the subcontract with either a bigger corporation or government. The profit share of these corporations is heavily distributed to major shareholders and corporate executives instead of rewarding majority individual workforce members propping up the daily business activities. Therefore, the priority on rewording the merit of individual workforces tends to be undermined under the current socio-economic structure.
It sounds like being a big government advocate by claiming for more positive public interventions. However, its attempt is to avoid the excess centralisation of the capital flows monopolised by corporatist oligarchies and the unfair heavy regulations imposed by government bureaucrats protecting their interest. Without this intervention, the government will become even bigger under the influence of these corporate oligarchies as their political influence is overwhelming the others with relatively less advantages. This should be the intervention to decentralise the whole socio-economic structure to encourage more healthy and fair competitions which the laissez-faire capitalism of the good old days used to promote.
What the big government advocates such as the orthodox Marxists should be criticised is their excess centralisation of the means of production. Even though they have an originally good will of deserving the majority, it often fails to deserve the majority because this centralised political system put higher priority on deserving those elite bureaucrats at first. This failure of the centralised means of production takes place under the current corporatist capitalism due to its excessively centralised flow of the capital.
As John Maynard Keynes affirmed, the reform of optimising the balance of private and public sector with the positive intervention to the market with a right harmony is the key to enable the free as well as the fair market economy to survive. Yet, the Keynesian policy also contains the risk of failing into the paternalism by the central government conducting the intervention. Then, it will be necessary to spread the policy decision makings out to much smaller scale such as local authorities and cooperatives.
The power weight of the public corporations over the private corporation is way more excess than the past. The dominance of the investors/shareholders of these public corporations induces the asymmetric distribution of their profit share which undermines the contribution by the majority individual workforces. The initiative attracting these investors is necessary whilst the distribution weight of the profit share provision is overweighted onto them nowadays. In order to appreciate the contribution by these majority individuals providing the actual workforces, their reward should be derived from not only the labour costs but also some pies from the profit share.
It should also take reviving small and medium sized enterprises into consideration. The oligopoly of the major private banks perpetuates the public corporations' dominance over the private corporations of small and medium sized businesses. This is another reason to shift the economic and political power to the local authority and cooperative which are able to monitor the business performance of their local enterprises as they are located close to each other. Instead of merely relying on the major private banks, rending and legal support from the local authority and cooperative should be more available. The initiative of expanding the decentralised public sector is to encourage more private businesses of not only the big public corporations but also the multiple numbers of the private corporations.
All in all, it is the time to be sceptical about the big government of the market monopoly! Majority individuals need to capture the power by empowering the decentralised public managements to counter the centralised public body by the puppet government of these corporatist aristocrats. The grass-root political lobbying must take place to capture the socio-economic freedom of majority individuals!!
No comments:
Post a Comment