There are real problems trying to deal with very large corporations and entities, like multinationals. Dealing with problems that arise from personal relationships can be simpler; you can try to solve the problem or leave the relationship. Usually in personal cases there is relatively equal bargaining power. Dealing with problems with an entity that has acquired a near monopoly of some kind or another cannot usually be solved; you can, of course, leave the relationship but you must then engage in another relationship with a similar large and over powering entity. Like the farmer in Grapes of Wrath, you learn there is no point in shooting the bailiff; another bailiff will arrive shortly.
Sometimes perhaps we can be over-fussy about being cheated by a bank or energy company or a shop that is a branch of a very large business, especially as we get older when we can see thing more clearly. It may be a small matter, those few hours that you wasted waiting for a delivery, or those few pounds that you were forced to pay which were grabbed unfairly from your pocket, but there is little you can do that is commensurate to the loss suffered.
I expect if I could devise a way of stealing just one penny from everyone’s bank account in the United Kingdom and the theft appeared on the bank statements under neutral words hardly anyone would bother to complain until someone realised that I had in fact stolen millions. How much time should we waste on such matters? No time at all should be spent, if we look at it from our own perspective, but plenty of time must be spent if we look at the grand scale of theft that is being carried out.
Banks, energy companies, insurers, retailers, search engine providers, telecoms businesses, petrol stations, train companies and airlines and governments have all learned that stealing a few pence from everyone that crosses their paths raises more money that trying to earn a few pounds properly. In fact the practices are so prevalent that we no longer think it unfair if a bank charges money for programming its computer to send out a letter to say that you have exceeding your limit, or if an insurer charges you a princely sum simply for noting that you have moved your home down the road a few yards, – I could go on.
The problem that we suffer (and we all do suffer as money from our pockets which we have usually earned by working ultimately goes to swell the coffers of those who are already far wealthier than us) arises from one simple fact; all of these institutions have become too big and it is now a perversion of language to claim that they “compete” with each other in any way.
So we are oppressed by a myth – a myth that we are in the most cases buying goods and services from businesses that compete with each other. There is an element of predatory competition usually when the early stages of a business there is a rush to develop a monopoly. Ultimately you know, if you run a business which tries to acquire a monopoly you will never be permitted to become a monopoly unless it is some relatively obscure activity. So probably trying to achieve a monopoly is impossible in western democratic countries but achieving an oligopoly (where several businesses control a market) is possible and if you can be part of an oligopoly, riches will follow you for the rest of your days.
In the United Kingdom there are six major suppliers of electricity and natural gas to the market. In order to fix a market, they do not need to collude; one of them will simply push up its prices knowing the others will follow. We are told that we need an energy oligopoly in order to provide investment in energy infrastructure, but that makes no sense to me. The energy companies do not raise money from their shareholders, but from their customers and it is awfully hard to avoid being a customer of an energy company, or a bank or an insurance company.
So I suppose we have no choice but accept the fact that we are oppressed by oligopolies and there is little we can do about it and nothing the government wants to do about it.
Filed under: climate change | Tagged: oligopoly |
Robert Kyriakides's Weblog 
To stop the theft of your whole, you must start empowering yourself by using a sellection of skills, then you can slowly remove yourself from the vunerable positions often designed by the theives.
If you are due a delivery, make sure there is an alternative collector, if the delivery outlet do not try to contact you and a return delivery payment is due, refuse to contract with the company, and return the goods without opening them, there are now plenty of other outlets selling the same product, if not don’t get bitten by the bug and walk away..
Letters of anoyance, junk, return them to the company by sticking a label over the main address from the back or the contents, write on the new label, reseal the envolope and pop it back in the post, this alone can remove the pennies they are trying to steal, do it every time, they don’t like it, it costs them.
Refuse to do bussiness by direct debit, do things by cheque only, the sellers will have take it or loose the custom, stop bowing down to dictorial authority where your hard earned labour is concerned. look upon it as your labour, not money, and you will eventually take back your freedoms previously removed, don’t be put off, use your own wasted minuites for your own gain and the whole regains valuable confidences.
Destroy your cards and use the paper more otherwise you will be redirected to the electronic batton and avenue the money want things.
Insurances are now being used as indirect violences, we need to stop paying them if they are being used as weapons, many have non and will never use them.
As soon as the instigators realise the people are not contracting they will have to start respecting the givers.
It is basically common scence, loose your imaginary fears of a system now en-route to becoming dictatorships, remove yourself from the problems and the problem makers will stand out like a bunch of sore fingers, doing the pointing.
Dear Mr Anonymous,
what you say is true but it is a rocky and difficult road.
Rather than voluntary excommunication from the monetary system instead many have learned to exploit it.
As I see it there are two ways of exploiting the system. Benefits (free money) and crime. Often fused into one.
The honest citizen faced with so much extortion from his savings and hard earned income will only have two options for dealing with it. Impoverishment or dishonesty.
Impoverishment will lead to a Darwinian extinction.
Dishonesty will mean survival. Initially for example, paying cash to VAT registered tradesmen, buying counterfeit DVD’s, lunch bribes to company buyers, claiming for expenses not expended.
As I see it the whole country has become as dishonest due to:
(a) large companies particularly globals’ exploitation of the citizen and the UK as a whole.
(b) politicians’ exploitation of expenses and laws based on self interest and jobs in industry after leaving office.
(c) unsustainable immigration particularly from countries with systemic and widespread corruption.
In a society where our (so called) democratically elected government ignores widespread theft by large companies corruption will spread itself and in the end the honest become extinct
Hi Chris
It is a rocky and uneven road, I do agree with you in many ways but not all of them. Thing is not to look any further than one needs to, look where one needs to, forget where others are wasters, look towards your hands do your own dishes.
We have spent the last 20 plus years getting out of the current system, we are today using our hard earned skills to stay below the limits and legally and pay nothing and claim next to nothing.
Yet we are standing in the best handmade shoes, hand spun and hand knitted Aran’s, eat propper food planted by our own hands, I could go on all evening but that would be pretty boring.
The ultimate trick here is definately skills, tried and tested and proven, this is where anyone with a brain should be heading, before people like us have gone the way, however more and more people are seeing the wood from the trees, and seeking the savings.
All of these benefits must start in house, then in reciprocation, not from the stable of slavery in anothers name, as we all travel further into the current rabbit hole, the more knowledge one owns via hands on, will help them escape much of what is going to come in the next decade.
Start counting the savings that the skills give us, and the freedoms materialise believe me, the numbers are well worth the troubles believe me..
Lets have this conversation in another decade, if Rob keeps this window open or is allowed to.