Politicians often praise how great capitalism is and how it has made America great. This is true, but only to a certain extent. Yes, capitalism helped the U.S. become an economic powerhouse, but we are no longer a capitalist country. To clarify, by capitalist country, I mean a country in which a free market reigns, something we have not had for a while now.
The United States exists in a constant oligopoly for most industries, since the few existing corporations control a majority of the market. Businesses like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and only a few others control most of the oil industry. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile control most of the cellphone carrier market, while Apple and Samsung make the majority of mobile phones for those carriers. The existence of an oligopoly-dominated market makes it extremely hard for small businesses to succeed, since they do not possess the same resources as these large corporations – sorry to those who would rather blame the President for business failure.
The energy industry is a prime example of the dangers of having oligopolies instead of allowing a free market to exist naturally. The World Economic Forum reported in December of 2016 that solar and wind energy were now the same price or cheaper than fossil fuel in over 30 countries. Now, before people cry wolf and say that converting to clean energy will destroy thousands upon thousands of jobs, remember that clean energy creates jobs too. According to Bloomberg Magazine, “8.1 million people worldwide had jobs in the clean energy [industry] in 2015.”
So why is clean energy not more prevalent? Easy: the fossil fuel industry has existed for so long and buys so many politicians that they simply refuse to go away because of the money. In a true free-market economy, clean energy would be on its way to pushing fossil fuel industries out of business, and yet fossil fuels are still going strong. Thanks to legislation, regarding protecting the environment, some of these corporations have suffered and are on their way out.
If the energy industry is too far of a stretch, consider how many mom-and-pop stores have been put of business by the likes of Walmart, Sam’s Club, Target and more. Forbes and Time Magazine emphasize this in articles from 2013 and 2016, respectively. How can these small businesses compete with the insanity that is Walmart? That’s a rhetorical question; small businesses rarely ever beat the superstores.
What’s worse is that if a superstore that has decimated the local businesses of an area leaves, the locals are often left without a pharmacy and/or groceries within reasonable distance. And don’t even get me started on the wages: Walmart’s owners, the Walton family, are worth more than 40 percent of Americans.
With all of these conditions, how is our free-market economy really free? When a similar issue arose under President Teddy Roosevelt, as many corporations began to develop monopolies, he broke up these corporations into multiple smaller ones to encourage competition and ensure the health of the free market. Perhaps it is time to do that again.
