How do coercive Government policies turn competitive markets into monopolistic competition into government-granted monopolies?

Sep 20, 2019

Welcome to Finance and Fury, The Furious Friday Edition

Today – Run through SDG Goal 17 – Sneaky side to the SDGs along with the method of creating global monopolies – part 1 of two – today 17, next week 12 – they go hand in hand

1. SDG17: “seeks to strengthen global partnerships to support and achieve the targets of the 2030 Agenda - bringing together national governments, the international community, civil society and the private sector”

The partnership programs for the UN – Who are these actors?

1. National Governments – self-explanatory – The bringing together of Aus, China, Belgium, etc – every nation
2. The international community – used in geopolitical terms to refer to everyone in the world – global citizens is another term
3. Civil Society – NGOs and activist groups
4. Private Sector - Companies – but only the giant multinationals this will benefit – I know I didn’t get an invite
   1. I originally thought that the private sector would say no to these policies – they are meant to make profits
   2. But a lot of the largest are enthusiastically backed the new goals
   3. Example - mega-corporations backing the scheme are the world’s top three search engines: Google, Microsoft’s Bing, and Yahoo –
   4. If you look it up online – everything positive – how it can restore trust in companies, how it can harness growth in the modern economy – all to preserve global resources
   5. If these corporations’ support for the UN agenda, do you think this may affect the supposed impartiality of search results? If you are interested, try duckduckgo compared to the same google searches

Have a question: Ask myself this - Do we live in a plutocracy? – billionaires, multinational companies and unelected global governments telling us how to live –

1. They fly in private jets and consume far more than the average joe = produce more CO2 than us – but there are only a few of them – so okay, right? They can act as hypocrites –
2. Part of the UN strategy - Recs have to come from others – if the UN says to do it, people may be sceptical
   1. But what If google says to do it? Or CEOs like Bill Gates say to do it? They have good public images
   2. Why should we trust Someone who was giving millions for research to the recently suicided Jeffrey Epstein, like Gates?
3. Michael Cannon-Brookes – company partaking – but didn’t he just fork out over $100m for property at Point Piper? Don’t know about you – I find this Interesting– why if we are going to be underwater in 10 years?
4. Look around - Billionaire property developers putting up massive projects on coast lines around the world – Florida
   1. Would banks lend to finance these projects on the coast? 30-year mortgage for a costal property? No – banks don’t want to lose money – Developments on the coast wouldn’t be lent to as they would be 5m underwater
5. Use logic – ignore the science that is funded to look for climate change (p.s. if cant find no more money) –
   1. if the financial system and ‘ultra-wealthy' are either lending or buying property on the beaches – while also telling us to change behaviours in the name of climate, along with taxing future generations more to save the planet – is it real or just a scare tactic to control people choices and extract more resources?

 

What if we don’t want these SDGs?

Do we get a vote? No - When you pay close attention – becomes one rule for me and one rule for thee

1. Reading the UN literature on this, as well as from the horse’s mouth – UN Economic Commission secretary said that these policies (especially circular economy – details more in next week) – “compulsory choice for a sustainable world”
2. A lot of politicians pretend that the SDGs are binding – they aren’t so these agreements should have no force
3. But as UN Agenda 21 previously showed - the people must demand these changes through their elected representatives – that is where the power of the UN comes from – Companies, activist groups acting on behalf of UN
   1. UN. Agenda 21 was heavily pushed by an NGO called ICLEI - none of us had been informed about it or have voted for it in any way; it basically leads to the loss of personal freedom and sovereignty worldwide

 

That is why the 2030 Agenda is universal

– ‘applying to all countries and actors’ - nations to take climate action – but the social pressure has to come from everywhere – Companies, activist groups like getup, Even schooling with global citizenship programs

The day this is released – climate strikes occurring across the world – taking the afternoon off to glue yourself to a road will really tell the earth to stop rotating on its axis leading to changes in climate

1. The focus has been pushed on CO2 emissions – said a while back that this – I wish this was an onion article – but is the sort of thing that creating Co2 as the enemy leads to after CO2 gas was rebranded as ‘carbon’ – we are carbon based lifeforms – why not eat our ways out of the problems?
   1. Global warming – Sweden – scientist introduced eco-cannibalism – eating people – I don’t want to do this – but if UN gets its way – legislate that we have to – come back to this in future SDG eps
2. Let’s just assume that we are doomed – not that climate change is real – as the climate changes – changes 4 times a year where I live - estimates at 10k years ago, the Sahara Desert had the largest inland lake – Lake Chad, along with being a forest – obviously the climate changes –
   1. Why not invest into something that can help us adapt to this? What is policy response instead? To control climate, have to control what people buy, where they work, what they eat – Control the economy, control our lives, in the promise that the world will be saved – Government promises – that no government can deliver on

 

This is part of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda – but it is a mess – not my words

1. A commentary in The Economist in 2015 said that the SDGs are "a mess" compared to the eight MDGs
   1. MDGs were about development while the SDGs are about sustainable development plus the SDGs have a level of inter-connectedness to all of their perceived problems
2. Whilst the MDGs were strongly criticized by many NGOs as only dealing with the problems – not going far enough
   1. The SDGs deal with the causes of the problems – What problems? Education? Energy? Inequality?

 

What do they need partnership programs, activists and companies for? Beyond the blanket marketing – help implement

1. Goals - Strengthen domestic resource mobilization - through support to developing countries for them to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection
   1. Total government revenue as a proportion of GDP – Developed 23% of GDP while developing at 18% - Want to get developing up to increase global taxation base
2. Goal - Developed countries to implement official development assistance commitments
   1. Target of 0.7% of ODA/GNI to developing countries and 0.20% of ODA/GNI to least developed countries
   2. GNI – Gross national incomes - Official development assistance(ODA) - government aid designed to promote the economic development of developing countries
      1. Remember – Govs gets income from tax – taxing us to send money overseas – setting targets of sending money overseas based around 1% of our Gross national income each year - $18bn per year – money has to come from somewhere – meant to help with aid – but only when it goes to the right place and not Development banks
      2. Also How well does giving aid to African nations run by dictators go when massive corruption exists? It doesn’t -
3. Goal - Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources
   1. Sources - Foreign direct investments (FDI) as a proportion of domestic budget and remittances as a proportion of total GDP
   2. Eradicating poverty – by making everyone poor – One thing in it is about remittances (money on sending cash back overseas) – want to cap to 3% fees - enforce on banks on money transfer companies – Mastercard is on board
      1. Why would large companies want to cap their costs? Another barrier to entry for all – Mastercard survives but smaller companies may not be able to make profits
      2. In 2019, annual remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are projected to reach $550 billion
      3. Makes remittance flows larger than FDI – Remittances are growing 9% p.a. – as this grows, less money spent domestically hurts economic growth and also puts downwards pressure on AUD due to outflows

Remember – a lot of this policy is being pushed under climate change and equality as justification - Scam – two-fold –

1. Firstly - people are constantly bombarded – being made afraid as well so it shuts down logical thought and makes it easy to control
   1. Fear, information overload – all shuts down our ability to rationally think
   2. Government is positioned as the only ones to help – moral puritans and pearl clutches telling others to change behaviours
2. Secondly – allows Governments to let companies take over – monopolise the production and consumption – Circular economy – next week
   1. Companies pandering to social pressure – Nike, Gillette, Monopoly with Ms monopoly – if I identify as a woman can I get more money from the start like the rules say?
   2. If they don’t pander – they aren’t invited to the UN party – Sadly for shareholders – they are punished as these companies suffer in profits from public backlash –
   3. This should be a market sign to just stick to providing products and services – not lecturing us

 

Leading into next weeks ep – the Companies on the list –

1. H&M group – great history of cheap child labour
2. SC Johnson - 1997, S. C. - taken advantage of audit errors and filed fraudulent tax returns, underpaying its taxes by millions of dollars More recently – was fined for Price Fixing on hygiene products –
   1. Greenlist process - settled a lawsuit that alleged the company's Greenlist label misled consumers into believing the products were reviewed by a third party and given a seal of approval – they gave it to themselves
3. Renault – Owns Nissan – Massive producer of EV – major beneficiary from banning petrol cars
4. Banks – going to make billions from issuing the green bonds and other financial products in raising capital
   1. Or making money from lending to green projects which tax funds go towards paying off

 

These examples aren’t to single out companies

- just the nature of companies and What happens with monopolies and government backing – regulators mostly turn a blind eye – until whistle-blowers or public hold them to account

5. Companies act in self-interest- normally to make a profit but most of these act in anti-competitive behaviours
   1. Illegal practices – price-fixing, pushing for legislation to create barriers to entry
   2. Monopolistic competition is a type of imperfect competition such that many producers sell products that are differentiated from one another and hence are not perfect substitutes – why there is one or two large multi-national from each industry
6. When you introduce coercive government policies on the market - monopolistic competition will fall into government-granted monopolies
   1. and the monopoly to be served under government is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of government enforcement. As a form of coercive monopoly, government-granted monopoly is contrasted with a coercive monopoly or an efficiency monopoly, where there is no competition but it is not forcibly excluded
   2. Advocates for government-granted monopolies often claim that they ensure a degree of public control over essential industries - without having those industries actually run by the state
      1. Easy way to control the production and consumption options for goods and services
      2. Just make it so hard for anyone else to complete they go out of business
   1. Causes inefficiencies in the market place = higher prices to consumers for the good or service being supplied
   2. Solutions given are government-imposed price caps = rent control and power prices = derelict apartments and rolling blackouts when tried – so will this time be any different?
7. Allows companies to set prices and production policies without fear of breeding potential competition
8. Why would politicians let this happen? Well, who pays their bills and provides the campaign financing?
9. That is where we leave this – part two going further into the circular economy in next ep

 

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