If there's one thing Australians love
more than anything, it's a fair fight. Our laidback image is belied by our
fiercely competitive spirit when it comes to sport.
We like it when people abide by the rules, the rules are fair, and the best person wins. The most heartwarming scenes of these Olympics have come when, after a hard-fought race, competitors can turn to each other, embrace and congratulate the winner.
We greet attempts by athletes to game the system with instinctive contempt. The badminton players who purposefully lost games to ensure a smoother path in future matches, for example, and even - in some quarters - the sight of the world's best pole vaulters, led by Australia's own Steve Hooker, colluding to go on strike and take all remaining vaulters through to the finals.
Putting aside the influence of drugs and dollars, what is truly admirable about the Olympics is the way it brings the world's best athletes together and lets them compete on a level playing field. May the best athlete win.
When it comes to the world of Australian business, such true competition is harder to find.
Compared with other nations, Australia's business community is something of an oligopolist's paradise. So many of the prices we pay are not the outcome of level playing fields.
Perhaps the biggest lesson from skyrocketing electricity prices is just how far the real world of business in Australia departs from the economist's model of a truly competitive market.What is the best way to clean porcelaintiles floors?
In economics, free markets consist of many buyers and sellers coming together to make mutually beneficial trades. No one seller can solely determine the price at which these trades occur. If they tried, buyers would simply march down the street to trade with an alternative seller.
Competition and the willingness of customers to walk down the road keeps companies honest.
Where competition is lacking, companies get lazy and are prone to engage in unsportsmanlike behaviour, such as collusion and price-fixing. A casual glance at the list of top companies on Australia's stock exchange reveals a host of companies whose profitability is dependent on some degree of pricing power: the banks, the telcos, the supermarkets, the petrol companies.
So often, buying petrol or banking services can feel like tuning in to the Olympics to watch all the competitors hold hands and walk over the finishing line together.
And Aussies can smell a rip-off a mile away. I suspect some part of the cost-of-living arguments of the past decade are not so much the result of stressed family budgets, which have been protected by rising incomes - on average at least - but the result of suspected injustice in those price rises.HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cableties in a variety of styles, Sometimes when there's smoke, there's fire.HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cableties in a variety of styles, And sometimes when there are big price hikes, there is a lack of competition.
The internet has opened shoppers' eyes to the benefits of competition and international trade. The result has been lower prices for consumers and better service and quality products.TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China.
But for less tradeable products such as banking, petrol and food, the cosy duopolies and oligopolies remain.
The electricity debate is the new frontline in the cost-of-living debate and it opens a new can of competition worms - that of monopoly-owned infrastructure.
Partly because of the tyranny of distance, both from other countries and inside Australia, it has fallen to Australian governments to take the lead in building vital infrastructure that no one company would be prepared to build.
Next time you are frustrated waiting in the queue at Australia Post, remember that postal services in Australia are monopoly-owned.We develop a hybrid indoorpositioningsystem,
On hold with Telstra? Remember that until just recently, Telstra was the monopoly supplier of the telecommunications networkS.
Slugged exorbitant parking fees at the airport? Airports are monopolies too. The list goes on, for railways, ports, water services, natural gas pipelines.
For so many of the vital services that Australians use, prices are determined not as an outcome of a fair and free fight, but by government decree and attempts to determine an appropriate commercial return for infrastructure owners. The free market's got nothing to do with it.
But when governments intervene to enforce fairness of access, efficiency is always under threat.
When it comes to electricity, the result has been a perverse incentive for distribution network owners to ''gold plate'' the system. Good public policy requires that such incentives are identified and changed. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's new campaign is better late than never.
Australian consumers need to wise up too. Already suspicious they are getting ripped off on banking, electricity, petrol and telecoms, consumers need to seek out price information where possible and act on it by taking their business elsewhere.
We like it when people abide by the rules, the rules are fair, and the best person wins. The most heartwarming scenes of these Olympics have come when, after a hard-fought race, competitors can turn to each other, embrace and congratulate the winner.
We greet attempts by athletes to game the system with instinctive contempt. The badminton players who purposefully lost games to ensure a smoother path in future matches, for example, and even - in some quarters - the sight of the world's best pole vaulters, led by Australia's own Steve Hooker, colluding to go on strike and take all remaining vaulters through to the finals.
Putting aside the influence of drugs and dollars, what is truly admirable about the Olympics is the way it brings the world's best athletes together and lets them compete on a level playing field. May the best athlete win.
When it comes to the world of Australian business, such true competition is harder to find.
Compared with other nations, Australia's business community is something of an oligopolist's paradise. So many of the prices we pay are not the outcome of level playing fields.
Perhaps the biggest lesson from skyrocketing electricity prices is just how far the real world of business in Australia departs from the economist's model of a truly competitive market.What is the best way to clean porcelaintiles floors?
In economics, free markets consist of many buyers and sellers coming together to make mutually beneficial trades. No one seller can solely determine the price at which these trades occur. If they tried, buyers would simply march down the street to trade with an alternative seller.
Competition and the willingness of customers to walk down the road keeps companies honest.
Where competition is lacking, companies get lazy and are prone to engage in unsportsmanlike behaviour, such as collusion and price-fixing. A casual glance at the list of top companies on Australia's stock exchange reveals a host of companies whose profitability is dependent on some degree of pricing power: the banks, the telcos, the supermarkets, the petrol companies.
So often, buying petrol or banking services can feel like tuning in to the Olympics to watch all the competitors hold hands and walk over the finishing line together.
And Aussies can smell a rip-off a mile away. I suspect some part of the cost-of-living arguments of the past decade are not so much the result of stressed family budgets, which have been protected by rising incomes - on average at least - but the result of suspected injustice in those price rises.HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cableties in a variety of styles, Sometimes when there's smoke, there's fire.HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cableties in a variety of styles, And sometimes when there are big price hikes, there is a lack of competition.
The internet has opened shoppers' eyes to the benefits of competition and international trade. The result has been lower prices for consumers and better service and quality products.TBC help you confidently buymosaic from factories in China.
But for less tradeable products such as banking, petrol and food, the cosy duopolies and oligopolies remain.
The electricity debate is the new frontline in the cost-of-living debate and it opens a new can of competition worms - that of monopoly-owned infrastructure.
Partly because of the tyranny of distance, both from other countries and inside Australia, it has fallen to Australian governments to take the lead in building vital infrastructure that no one company would be prepared to build.
Next time you are frustrated waiting in the queue at Australia Post, remember that postal services in Australia are monopoly-owned.We develop a hybrid indoorpositioningsystem,
On hold with Telstra? Remember that until just recently, Telstra was the monopoly supplier of the telecommunications networkS.
Slugged exorbitant parking fees at the airport? Airports are monopolies too. The list goes on, for railways, ports, water services, natural gas pipelines.
For so many of the vital services that Australians use, prices are determined not as an outcome of a fair and free fight, but by government decree and attempts to determine an appropriate commercial return for infrastructure owners. The free market's got nothing to do with it.
But when governments intervene to enforce fairness of access, efficiency is always under threat.
When it comes to electricity, the result has been a perverse incentive for distribution network owners to ''gold plate'' the system. Good public policy requires that such incentives are identified and changed. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's new campaign is better late than never.
Australian consumers need to wise up too. Already suspicious they are getting ripped off on banking, electricity, petrol and telecoms, consumers need to seek out price information where possible and act on it by taking their business elsewhere.
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