August 1, 2006 at 08:51:37

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Monopoly is bad, in geo-politics too.

By Ranjit Goswami (about the author)     Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Ranjit Goswami - Writer

In the History of corporate and management practices, we have seen again and again that Monopoly is bad. It's bad for the customers, it's bad for the industry as innovations stop and industry stagnates, and it's bad for the monopolistic entity too as eventually the degenerated firm faces competition that it no more can take on.

The world has sort of learned modern business-management practices from Corporate America. And there are enough examples in corporate History on how a monopolistic situation resulted into losses for all stake-holders. Monopoly is bad for all, but it's worse for the customers.

And it only shows when corporate America and businesses globally have reformed and re-engineered over years to reflect the need of the hour and to meet global competition better; our policy makers globally have done little towards that.

However global policy-makers have that 'know-it-all' attitude; and they are late-learners. One may argue whether they learn at all. They are assured of their salaries from our taxes and 'fiat' money, so they lack that urge to make that competitive survival and profit.

Present turmoil globally shows that global policy-makers have not learned from the History of Corporate entities. We talk about reforms in UN, whereas need of the hour is an overall geo-political reform. However it's easier said than done.

Monopoly is bad for all - even for the monopolistic company in the medium-to-long term. Any monopolistic company would love to retain its monopoly over the industry; the urge to do so is natural for that monopolistic entity. Without industry watch-dogs, Microsoft could have thwarted many other competitions to retain its undisputed monopoly globally for many more years. We may not have had a Google under such a scenario.

However unlike in business entities where Government set-up watch dogs to safeguard collective interest of all stakeholders in an industry, there's no watchdog in global power-politics to safe-guard collective interest of its citizens.

And it's the collective failure of all of us in this world that has resulted in this apparent lack of direction of human civilization in its present form.

Expectedly and naturally, the only monopoly of global geo-politics would eventually degenerate economically and geo-politically, internally and externally. More important is at what cost, and who bears that cost?

Unfortunately the cost is potentially as huge as degeneration of human civilization globally.

Has it started happening already? Are the signs too palpable to point at that degeneration of the monopoly, internally and externally; and therefore degenaration of that overall industry, that of our civilization?

An internal look at the fiscal indiscipline, the gross indebtedness of US Government and overall America, the possibility of a collapse of the Social Security System, the patch-up job post Hurricane Katrina point out at some of these internal degenerations within that monopolistic entity.

Present middle-east crisis in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine; and crises elsewhere may be early tell-tale signs of degeneration of that monopoly externally. Global power-politics is starving for far too long without the much needed competitive forces, and its innovations.

Monopoly slowly results in degeneration of that entity, and in the absence of other entities failure to shoulder some responsibility for the industry, it results in the degeneration of the industry itself.

We are at a critical juncture of human civilization at this point.

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