Reply #66: I think you missed my point [View All]

[William Z. Foster]

Perhaps I wasn't clear.

Of course nationalization is a form of public regulation of an industry.

Also, I am not advocating eliminating sales, markets, or trade.

Competition does not increase innovation and lower prices for consumers. It does the exact opposite. Most of the innovation - computers and the Internet are a prime example - came from public research. The purloining of that research for private gain has clearly limited innovation and cost the consumer far more.

Competition drives down wages and cheapens the quality of the product and works against the consumer. This isn't even controversial - it is an inescapable fact of every day life, and people everywhere are complaining about it.

Just because the pro-business and anti-worker think tanks keep peddling the line that "competition increases innovation and lowers prices for consumers" does not make it true, let alone immune from critical analysis.

Or perhaps you think that the outsourcing of almost all manufacturing of consumer goods to China, because of competition, has been a good thing for all of us?

In any case Wall Street has all of the power. How can a weaker entity regulate or tame a more powerful entity?

Saying "I would like lovely ripe crops, that is the program I favor, not that dangerous and radical and dirty program of plowing and weeding" would be silly. Yet "regulated capitalism" is the crop, and it was only won by the workers standing together and resisting and fighting back - dangerous and radical and dirty program of plowing and weeding. It is illogical to advocate for enjoyment of the crop - regulated capitalism - as an alternative to the hard work needed to get that crop - educating, organizing, resisting and fighting back.