FastForward Radio — More About the Future of Energy

Let’s let the free market take care of our problem for us. Things will then work themselves out.

@ Jonathan: The free market doesn’t “take care of” anything; the conduct of the transactors determine the results. As a slightly irrevrant metaphor, the market is only the Forum (OK, historically the Circus Maximus); who actually ends up feeding the lions (in any sense of the phrase) is decided by the people doing business there together, not the structure within which they all do so.

@ Harvey: Actually, that would all depend on how you measure things. Bottom line (according to who’s accounting)? Market share (by what metric)? Percentage of profit per transactional financial unit $ (are you at all familliar with a P&L or a Capital Inventory account)?

It is far more likely that the smaller corporate interests would manipulate a market egregiously than would a dominant business interest (like the aforementioned “energy businesses”). A position of market dominence is measured by how much influence one’s own actions exert upon the actions of one’s competitors. Simply put, the largest corporations can (and do – this is practical reality, not theory) show a profit from the smallest individual transactional measure as a result of the numerical superiority of such transactions such a company performs on an average business cycle. Smaller companies must still support (ie: pay for) the same transactional infrastructure that the truely big boys do, and from a smaller source of income to boot. IOW, the larger the corp, the less need to gouge the customer (and the larger number of insiders able to advance themselves in place of those they catch doing so as well – if the company is honestly run, of course).

In any case, by what other standard than “profit margins” would you recomend such companies measure themselves by? Ancillary to that, would you invest your own and all your relative’s retirement funds in said company? You’re right to question these matters, but I’m not convinced you fully grasp the concepts at issue. I know I don’t yet.