Discussion
Funny thing about competition: there's both a *pro*-market and an *anti*-market case for a competitive system.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/14/one-chokable-throat/#too-clever-by-half
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Typo in the alt text: the left dome contains the US capitOl (the building where Congress meets), not the US capitAl (the entire city of Washington DC).
If your theory is that markets deliver prosperity by spurring businesses to provide the superior products and services at lower prices needed to attract and retain workers and customers, then competition is a must-have. Without competitors, companies are "too big to care":
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi
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Meanwhile, if you think that the pressure of greed will always drive companies to cheat, and want companies held in check by democratically accountable lawmakers and enforcers, then you *also* want competition, because otherwise, disorganized sectors of hundreds of small businesses collapse into oligarchic cartels.
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Members of these cartels cease to compete directly with one another and instead collude to rip off workers and customers, leaving them aslosh in ready cash they can mobilize to capture regulators, securing an enshittogenic policy environment that reflects the easily arrived-at consensus that's only possible when you boil a sector down to a small handful of firms, each of them "too big to jail":
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/
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In other words: if your ideal is a world of high-quality products and services, produced by workers laboring under fair conditions, delivered to consumers at a fair price, then you want competition. Competition scares some people into running their businesses ethically; *and* competition ensures than an unethical operator can be held to account by government agencies charged with protecting workers and consumers.
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