Trust Not

Innovation needs a competitive environment to thrive. That is, companies must innovate in a competitive environment in order to survive and grow. There is not status quo. No resting point.

Monopolistic and oligarchical environments reduce the need for innovation, unless that innovation is related to further exploiting said monopolies and oligarchies in the interests of a minority over a majority.

Australia is a country of monopolies and oligarchies. Its a mostly hidden antitrust problem. We the human frogs in boiling water have been slowly annealed to the state of bemused compliance. We are however given enough of the spoils to consider ourselves lucky to be here. And if we happen to forget this, our politicians can always point to the hordes of queue jumping asylum seekers trying to join the party.

Antitrust – Although “trust” had a technical legal meaning, the word was commonly used in the US to denote big business, especially a large, growing manufacturing conglomerate of the sort that suddenly emerged in great numbers in the 1880s and 1890s. To be harmful, a trust had to somehow damage the economic environment of its competitors.

In Australia, we have taken a different approach. We condone large monopolies of the corporations that provide our services. We do however have a show pony ACCC, that takes the cricket bat to small entities in a mock show of antitrust fervor.

All this is to prove, once and for all, that the current focus on innovation is simply a marketing ploy by various agencies. They want to appear cool and sexy, while still serving the same old monopoly masters that reward their political dogs eventually.