Economic Nonsense: 39. Only strong government regulation can hold big business in check

It isn't strong government that causes concern for big business.  They are more worried about the smaller, newer businesses that might take away their trade.  It is competition, not government that they worry about.  Big business often cozies up to big government.  It employs lobbyists to negotiate with civil servants and ministers, and hammers out agreements on what types of regulations should be introduced, and how they should be implemented.

Big business can cope with regulation.  It can afford the staff to deal with compliance.  Small businesses, especially start-ups, find it more difficult to afford the money or the staff time that regulatory compliance takes up.  Big business knows this, and often strikes deals with lawmakers to impose regulation that will deter newcomers from entering the market.  Far from it being used to control big business, regulation often helps big business by imposing unacceptable costs on its real or would-be competitors.  People speak of "regulatory capture" when the industry works with government to secure helpful regulation.

Some regulation is needed to reassure the public that it will not fall victim to sharp practice or shady dealing, but five words should be engraved above the door of every legislator: "Competition is the best regulator."  It is competition that keeps firms striving to deliver high quality and keen prices.  The fear of losing trade is more powerful than the fear of incurring the displeasure of government.

Regulation is commonly used to protect those in the market from competition by those who might enter it.  If no-one can trim hair without training and a certificate, the prices charged by existing hairdressers will not be undercut.  If no one can enter the taxi trade without a medallion or a two-year training course, the fares charged by existing cabbies will be protected.  All rules like these are done in the name of protecting the public, but in reality it is the established operators that they most commonly protect.

To control big business government should pursue a policy of promoting competition.  It should make it easier, not harder, to enter established markets.  This, more than regulation, will keep firms attentive to their customers.

Economic Nonsense: 29. The economy should be based on co-operation rather than competition

It is competition that makes the economy work. Producers compete with each other to supply consumers, and consumers bid against each other to decide who buys. When goods are in short supply consumers bid up prices, sending a signal to producers to produce more and thereby redress the shortage. Competition allocates resources efficiently. The same steel that makes a bridge cannot also make a ship, and resources are allocated where they achieve most value and where they command the highest prices. Competition for workers drives up wages. It is competition throughout the economy that motivates people and sends the signals that tell people how to improve their circumstances.

If people attempted to base an economy on co-operation, it is difficult to see how they would know what to. Without the signals sent by competition in prices and resource allocation, they would not know what to produce, in what varieties and to what standard. The experiment with the socialist economies of the Soviet Union and its satellite states was an attempt to plan by co-operation instead of competition, and it failed miserably. State factories were inefficient and outdated and they produced shoddy goods. Shortages were a feature of everyday life.

State officials attempted to estimate needs and to instruct factories to produce goods accordingly. They had no knowledge of what people actually wanted. In a competitive economy, producers vie with each other to guess what the public will want, so that they can profit by producing it. In a co-operative economy they do not compete with each other, so some official or committee has to make the decision, with little at stake if they got it wrong, which they often did.

There is nothing wrong with competition. Misguided ideologues tried at one stage to eliminate it from schools, and some still do. In fact competition spurs people to improvement. It is usually friendly, with people looking to the achievements of others to see how they might improve their own lives. It is a fact of nature just as much as is the empathy we show towards others. Competition works, and it is a force that improves lives. In an economy it is essential.

School choice: first evidence to prove long-term benefits

A report released this month by Victor Lavy of CESifo is the first evidence of its kind to prove the long-term social and economic benefits of school choice. Up until now, research conducted has explored life outcomes resulting from varying teachers' quality, schools' quality, classroom sizes and other school programs. Yet to be unravelled was the impact of school choice later on in life and how the effects of different types of post-secondary schooling, varying by quality, persist beyond attainment and standardised test scores. Adult employment, earnings and dependency on welfare are all examined in primary school students offered free school choice in the junction of transition to secondary school to determine which educational interventions best achieve the desirable long-term outcomes.  Remarkably, students who had choice at primary school are 4.7 percentage points more likely to enroll in post secondary schooling, and to complete almost an additional quarter year of college schooling in comparison to controlled students. Further to this success was an estimated 5-7 percentage points increase in average annual earnings among treated students at ages 28-30. This is explained by the improvement in academic outcomes resulting from the school choice program and post-secondary schooling attainment which are highly correlated to labour market earnings. Most surprising in the findings was that school choice led to reductions in health or mental disability rates at age 30 and to a decline in eligibility and recipiency of 3 disability welfare allowances.

Lessons learned from this study - which was conducted in Israel - can be easily applied to other educational settings due to different countries having very comparable and similar high-stakes exit exams. The school choice program also has similar features to related programs in the US, in Europe and in other OECD countries. As a result, variants of this school choice program have the potential to be implemented in developed countries across the world.

A great advantage of this study is that it is also the first of its kind to present evidence that can easily be acted upon directly via policy. Whereas most related studies have looked at long-term outcomes of measures not easily manipulated by policy like teachers' and schools' quality.

All the evidence now suggests that allowing children and their parents to choose freely at age 13 which secondary school they will attend, not only improves sharply their high school outcomes six years later, but also influences their path to post-secondary schooling, enhances their earnings over a decade and a half later and reduces their dependency on the public welfare system. These results are important because the school choice experiment targeted a disadvantaged population in some of the more deprived parts of Tel Aviv. This is now the most potent contribution of late to the critical question surrounding what educational interventions are conducive to the best possible life outcomes. Now the empirical evidence provided by the paper creates a fuller picture of the individual and social returns from these interventions, and will equip educators and governments with the information required to make the most informed decisions as to which educational programs constitute the most beneficial use of limited school resources.

With increasingly prominent advocates of free school choice and more evidence exhibiting its merits, we can hope to see it embodied in policy in the near future. Standing in the way, unfortunately,  are politicians and educationalists with an unfaltering dedication to the taxpayer-funded state-monopoly of learning. Opponents of school choice are not home with freedom. For if you had the freedom to choose how to be educated, you would not choose their way.

Uber: helping drivers, helping customers

The first comprehensive analysis of Uber 'partners' (i.e. drivers) has come out, written by Dr. Jonathan Hall, head of policy research at Uber, and Prof. Alan Krueger, of Princeton, and formerly Barack Obama's top economist. The results in short: Uber provides flexible employment at higher per-hour wages than traditional taxi driving, while building up reputational capital that traditional taxi systems cannot offer. It does not undermine traditional employment more general, or enhance inequality, but we all know how cheap the fares can be, and how useful the service is (this previously led me to believe that its stratospheric valuation might be justified).

This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of Uber’s driver-partners, based on both survey data and anonymized, aggregated administrative data. Uber has grown at an exponential rate over the last few years, and drivers who partner with Uber appear to be attracted to the platform in large part because of the flexibility it offers, the level of compensation, and the fact that earnings per hour do not vary much with hours worked, which facilitates part-time and variable hours. Uber’s driver-partners are more similar in terms of their age and education to the general workforce than to taxi drivers and chauffeurs.

Uber may serve as a bridge for many seeking other employment opportunities, and it may attract well-qualified individuals because, with Uber’s star rating system, driver-partners’ reputations are explicitly shared with potential customers. Most of Uber’s driver-partners had full- or part-time employment prior to joining Uber, and many continued in those positions after starting to drive with the Uber platform, which makes the flexibility to set their own hours all the more valuable. Uber’s driver-partners also often cited the desire to smooth fluctuations in their income as a reason for partnering with Uber.

As we see above, Uber drivers really like their jobs, and that's probably why so many of them are still there a year later. I actually feel quite sympathetic towards existing taxi drivers both in the UK and US. They were forced by existing rules to invest heavily in getting their privileged spot in the market place, and Uber is effectively circumventing this process altogether.

This suggests we should compensate taxi drivers so that in the future people are not so worried that tech changes will force transformational rule changes that will ruin them. But this progress promises improvements on practically every margin of taxi driving; I can imagine a future where no traditional taxi driving exists—indeed with self-driving cars I can imagine a future where only an Uber-style rental-taxi system exists. So, compensation aside, it must go on.

Getting educated - like it's the 21st century

Innovative independent institutions are for those who can afford it and the rest will make do with the stagnant state school system: a status quo forthcoming generations should accept no more. An education revolution is on the horizon and Scotland, following its anticlimactic devolution of education, could lead the change. Solutions to the present state have existed for decades and – if actualised – promise to reinvent the way schooling is viewed for good. The rise of ideas meriting attention must coincide with resolved political leadership to eliminate inertia impeding the education model's evolution.

Shuffling taxpayers’ money back and forth between priorities has left us at a dead-end off the path to progress. Free university tuition fees for the wealthiest in Scotland are funded by taxes from the pockets of school-leavers who have gone straight into the job market. College places - the stepping stone to higher education for many young people - have suffered drastic decline after a sudden culling of courses. The Scottish government now funds free school meals for every child, regardless of need, until Primary 3. Meanwhile the poorest are taxed on almost half their income.

Politicians with the guts to be radical in education are scarce but an alternative to spending more money is necessary. Improving the quality of state schools from the heart of government has failed, and when not completely, has failed to achieve anywhere near the success possible if the public had the freedom to choose their schools. This includes, most importantly, having the pick of the private sector’s offerings. The idea is straightforward: individuals choose the best educational options available to them with their own interests in mind. A demand for the best quality schools that inevitably ensues is met on the supply side by a multiplication of the best schools and practices. The poorest schools and outdated methods become null and void, unwanted, and die out faster.

Placing choice in the hands of those the decision affects generally does not fail to deliver the goods. Products, services and technology once only enjoyed by the wealthy are now widespread and accessible for the common man. But education has not evolved like everything else. So rare are independent schools that most of the existing tiny private sector is branded elitist. And so self-deprecating are we encouraged to react to our great educational institutions that the recurring “Should private schools be banned?” debate is taken seriously and considered the only radical option. One day, these leading independent schools, though it will require us to be radical in the opposite direction, could be accessible to the average person too.

School vouchers is the practical policy in which this school choice could take shape. The voucher would be a means of subsidising the child as the consumer; instead of subsidising the state’s provision as happens now. Accountability and efficiency have so far been lost while politicians spend other people’s money on other people’s education. Each voucher would represent the cost of the state educating the child. Of course there are then many ways the policy can be created to cater to various factors and income backgrounds. First proposed by Milton Friedman all the way back in the 1960s, school vouchers have featured in UK Party manifestos but have never come to fruition here.

The mantra of Scotland's current leadership advocates their goal of a fairer Scotland we are all supposed to be striving towards. These are mere words. True fairness is the enhancing of the freedom to choose on the part of everybody. And as it stands this process is not happening. Implementing choice in policy is absolutely imperative as it will not just be conducive to overall improvement of education but it is a tool to innovate and evolve - the key to advancement.

Europe’s Digital Dirigisme

Google has recently announced that it is ending its Google News service in Spain before a new intellectual property law – dubbed the ‘Google tax’ – requires Spanish publishers to charge the company for displaying snippets of their articles. Whist newspapers claim that Google infringes copyright by using their text, Google argues that their News service drives traffic to the featured websites, boosting advertising revenues. Certainly, Germany’s biggest publisher Axel Springer scrapped plans to block Google from their news items when they discovered that doing so caused their traffic to plunge.

This is yet another complication of Google - EU relations. In May, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of the ‘right to be forgotten’, which has so far resulted in over 250,000 takedown requests. Building on this 'success', the EU now wants to force search engines to scrub ‘irrelevant or incorrect’ (read: inconvenient) links at a not just a European but a global level.

And as the European Commission’s four-year antitrust investigation into Google drags on, the European Parliament symbolically voted to break up its operation and ‘unbundle’ its search function from other services. Whilst the parliament has no power to touch the internet giant, it sends a very strong message as to what European politicians want.

European politicians portray such moves as guarding against monopoly, enabling fair competition and safeguarding the privacy of individuals. However, it’s not obvious that the way Google presents search results is to the detriment of its actual users (as opposed to rival firms), whilst the ‘right to be forgotten’ sets a dangerous precedent against internet openness. American firms and politicians have responded harshly to the actions, branding them politically motivated, anti-competitive and detrimental to trade relations.

European policy makers should be very careful not to cause harm to the digital economy through politicized regulation. Policymakers may be concerned by the digital domination of American firms like Amazon, Facebook and Google ­­ – yet it's worth noting Europe fails to produce many rivals of its own.

As the Eurozone struggles with weak growth and low inflation, the WSJ reports that the number of those engaged in early entrepreneurial activity in countries like Germany, France and Italy (5%, 4.6%, and 3.4% of the population respectively) is a fraction of those in the US (12.7%). Once they are established, these businesses tend to be smaller and slower-growing than their US counterparts. They also seem less likely to hit the big time: among the world’s 500 largest listed companies, only 5 of the European firms were founded after 1975, compared with 31 from the US and 31 from emerging economies.

Digital policy analyst Adam Thierer argues that the relative performance of US and European tech firms is largely driven by the regulatory culture in each country. US policy makers have by deliberate design fostered a culture of permissionless innovation, which allows and encourages entrepreneurs to innovate, push boundaries and take risks. As a result, the American tech sector has boomed, producing inventions and companies beloved and envied across the world. In contrast, European culture has been far more risk-averse and policy far more bureaucratic. The result of unnecessary regulation and data directives has been a dearth of successful European firms. Those European ‘unicorn’ firms which strike big have overwhelmingly come from countries fairly removed from continental Europe, such as the UK, Scandinavia and Russia.

The EU’s move towards net neutrality regulation, market interventions and tighter data laws will only further disadvantage tech firms. State interference is particularly unhelpful in dynamic, evolving digital sectors, where fast-paced progress is typical and innovation key to staying relevant. Moreover, European policymakers may want to check Google’s power through legislation, but it is large incumbent firms who have the resources and lawyers to comply with new regulation. Those hit hardest are smaller competitors, and the fledgling start-ups the EU should focus on encouraging.

In some sense, European policymakers are onto something with their suspicion of ‘big tech’. The vast majority of UK internet users say that they’re uncomfortable with what they share online and with whom, and even the technophilic Wired ran a recent cover story on how the data industry is ‘selling our lives’. Perhaps people really are fed up of Google, which then only maintains its 90% European market share in search because there’s no decent alternative.

But attacking Google's influence requires innovation, not regulation. Tech history is littered with market leaders such as IBM, Nokia and AOL who have slid, sometimes quite spectacularly, from the top spot. In tech-orientated sectors it is particularly hard for large firms to stay relevant and embrace new trends ­– let alone to develop them.

To facilitate creative destruction and the emergence of challenger firms, Europe needs a digital policy which is favorable to new technology and experimentation, and which encourages individuals to accept risk and forge ahead with business plans without first jumping through hoops and courting regulators (the trials and tribulations of Uber and Skype spring to mind here).

Blockchain-based projects which aim to ‘decentralize the internet’ and give users more control over their data are part of an exciting peer-to-peer movement which could re-sculpt the shape of the net. But these innovators are entering unchartered territory (a wild west, if you like), and an open and permissive regulatory culture is essential in allowing them to flourish (or fail).

Were Europe to grasp this, the benefits could be enormous. But if European policymakers carry on down their current path of tightening control, we're likely to see less entrepreneurship, less competition, reduced consumer utility, and probably a lot more Google.

On the merits of competition in government services

Perhaps we should be having more competition with government services? A businessman who built his own £325,000 toll road to bypass roadworks is to close the shortcut after the local council invested £660,000 to finish repairs five weeks early.

Mike Watts, 63, claims he will now not make a penny and will lose out on a profit of several thousand pounds after Bath and North East Somerset completed the work ahead of schedule.

He became the first private individual to build a British toll road in more than a century when a crucial road in Kelston, Somerset, was closed by a landslip, leaving locals with a 14-mile diversion.

The roadworks were scheduled to last until Christmas, which would have given Mr Watts and his wife Wendy, 52, a healthy profit on their £325,000 investment.

But instead the A431 Kelston Road between Bristol and Bath will re-open tomorrow, meaning he couple will just break even after spending £150,000 to build the road and £150,000 on upkeep.

That he won't make a profit is no doubt distressing to him but it's of no importance at all over public policy. And there's more than a suspicion (look, your humble writer is a Bathonian and he's absolutely convinced that there's no suspicion at all, this is simple fact) that the speed up was done out of spite. Can't have the council being made to look bad or incompetent, can we, people will wonder what they're paying their taxes for! But again that's of no real import here.

What is important is that the landslip has been corrected, the public road opened 5 weeks earlier than it would have been without the competition. And yes, even if is simply spite that drove that decision the consumers are all better off as a result. So, more competition in public services please: for we are supposed to be running this whole economy and government thing in order to benefit the consumers.

Why Miliband is wrong on energy policy

This article was originally published in the Young Fabian’s quarterly magazine, Anticipations (Volume 18, Issue 1 | Autumn 2014). On this we will agree: the corporate monopoly dominating the UK energy market needs to come to an end. Currently, British customers have a total of six firms to choose from in the energy market, all of which offer very limited price distinctions.

And those prices keep going up. Since 2010, gas and electricity rates have risen by three times the rate of inflation (10.2% between 2010-2013). Quite rightly, the Big Six are constantly under attack from very political party in the UK for over-charging customers and raising retail prices, even when wholesale costs fall. With such little competition in the energy market, mega-firms can charge extortionate prices, and customers have no choice but to pay the bill.

Another point of agreement: a change in government regulation is key to breaking up this monopoly. Both Labour and Conservatives acknowledge that government regulations, like Ofgem, aren’t holding the Big Six accountable for what they charge customers. Over the past few years, party leaders have come up with new variants of the Regulatory State to combat the problem. Most recently (and most misguidedly) Ed Miliband has advocated for a government-mandated freeze on energy prices, which would force firms to fix their prices for 20 months, regardless of future changes in market conditions.

Why is this misguided? Let’s put aside Miliband’s refusal to acknowledge the costs that are loaded on to energy companies by the state (ie: requirements to source energy from renewables), which in turn, gets pushed onto the customer and focus on a second, more important point: Miliband’s policy proposals reinforce the energy monopoly.

It’s near impossible to create a market monopoly without help from the ultimate monopoly; that is, competition in the market place is so often drowned out, not by competitors, but by the state.

The energy sector is a prime example of well-intentioned government regulation gone awry. The sector is regulated so heavily, through both onerous compliance requirements and heavy taxation, that it is near impossible for any budding energy firm to compete with the Big Six. In its effort to stop energy firms from over-charging customers, the state has effectively regulated all competitors out of the market, re-enforcing the monopoly it was trying to prevent.

The bureaucratic, slow-moving nature of government bodies means that they are not equipped to understand or anticipate the unpredictability of market prices on energy. The security of energy supplies, complexities of long-term contracts, and real commodity costs are often dismissed by politicians who have made unsustainable, politically motivated promises to voters. Whilst the Big Six have no incentive to bring energy prices down when they can, a Labour prime minister would have no incentive to bring the prices up even when he must.

Britain needs appropriate, scaled back monitoring of the energy market that removes ‘safeguards’ for the Big Six’s market share and introduces healthy competition in the market place. A less-regulated system where consumer choice dictates the real price of energy would see monthly bills drop. But piling price fixation on top of bad regulations will produce a lot of heat and very little light.

My word, you mean competition actually works?

Well, would you look at that! Apparently competition works to the benefit of consumers! Who could have possibly predicted that outcome?

Shop prices fell at the steepest rate for at least eight years last month as the popularity of discount stores among the middle classes helped to drive down the cost of clothing and consumer goods.

The overall price of items at the till fell by 1.8 per cent compared with June last year, with the price of clothes down by 13.7 per cent year-on-year.

The figures, compiled by the British Retail Consortium/Nielsen shop price index, show the fastest drop in prices since the trade association began compiling data in 2006.

It was also the 14th month in a row in which shop prices fell, easing the pressure on households where wage-earners have suffered pay freezes.

Yes, of course, the capitalists are straining every sinew to increase the profits that they make from our need for basic necessities such as food and drink. But in doing so they find themselves competing with other capitalists who would also like to like that pelf from our pockets. That competition then limiting the amount any one shop can charge and finally leading to falling prices for consumers.

Of course, a number of people have pointed this out before, starting with Adam Smith, Bastiat had things to say on the point and even Karl Marx got it. Monopoly capitalism is to be avoided for it is without that competition, for it is that market choice that makes such a system work to the benefit of consumers.

This is all obvious to us, the initiates, of course. But we need to continue to make a song and dance about it. Yes, there really are things that governments must do that cannot be done by other actors. Yes, there really are times that said government must intervene in the economy. But for the most part that intervention necessary is simply to ensure that competition is possible.

It's not necessary to ensure that competition is happening, only that it can. For a monopolist in possession of a contestable monopoly is unable to exploit that monopoly for fear of competition arising to contest it. It's not even necessary to have a level or even playing field, only to have an open one.

Worth noting the next time someone starts to complain about the monopoly of the supermarkets (as they do every few years, prompting yet another enquiry). Precisely because competition is forcing prices down we've obviously not got an exploitable monopoly here.

Where next for capitalism?

Writing for the BBC today, Madsen outlines his ideas about what capitalism should do to renew itself:

What capitalism should now do is to free itself from these rent-seeking perversions and spread its benefits as widely as possible.

It should act against anti-competitive practices to give people instead the power of free choices between competing goods and services. It should spread ownership of capital and investment as widely as possible through such things as personal pensions and individual savings accounts.

Read the whole thing.