Economists can play a positive role in structuring fair markets: empirical research on how firms actually make decisions and how markets actually impact people is very useful. But economic theories have been misused to assert primacy over, and subvert, the rule of law. Too many economists have succumbed to the corrupting influence of well-paying clients, among other things creating complex but narrow models to justify monopolisation. We need to remember that competition law is fundamentally about democratic values, not speculative predictions.
We co-hosted a wide-ranging, rich and highly energetic conference event yesterday in Brussels. The recording is now available.
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Welcome to the latest edition of The Counterbalance, the newsletter of the Balanced Economy Project. There is so much going on in the anti-monopoly space that we will intersperse our in-depth reporting with editions like this, focusing on recent updates.
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A large furiously busy industry of regulators, economists, lawyers, scholars, consultants, lobbyists and policy-makers work on competition law, nearly all operating inside narrow technocratic circles, often with little connection to the real world of warm-blooded citizens, taxpayers, small businesses or workers. Much of this frenetic activity has rubber-stamped the march towards monopoly that all our societies have suffered since the 1970s.
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