Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Anarchy, institutions and big business

I don't doubt that government is helping big business at the expense of small business. I know many examples of that myself. One example is when IKEA decided to establish themselves in my old hometown, Karlstad. The city of Karlstad sold the ground to IKEA for 1 million SEK (which was way below "market value").

Other Swedish municipalities have been paying wages for big business employees for years when they've established themselves there, as a thanks for "creating jobs" in the area.Does small business get the same treatment?

No.And the result of this discrimination in favor of big business? In Hagfors, Sweden, there was a call center. The company didn't have to pay wages for the employees, the local Arbetsförmedling (government's employment agency of Sweden) did that for them for three years.

Guess what? After three years, the call center was shut down.So there is no question of whether government and big business are in the same boat ("Staten och kapitalet sitter i samma båt", for those of you who understand Swedish and have heard Ebba Grön).

But there is another question: In Anarchy, there will still be institutions, and there would be no (coercive) limits of how big a company can grow, right?So there would still be big business, although they would now have to be more efficient than the competition. Right?

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