this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
29 points (100.0% liked)
Canada
7187 readers
476 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Communities
π Meta
πΊοΈ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
ποΈ Cities / Local Communities
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
π Sports
Hockey
- List of All Teams: Post on /c/hockey
- General Community: /c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- MontrΓ©al Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Football (CFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Baseball
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- Toronto Blue Jays
Basketball
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- Toronto Raptors
Soccer
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- General Community: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
π» Universities
π΅ Finance / Shopping
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
π£οΈ Politics
- Canada Politics
- General:
- By Province:
π Social and Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Climate change? Cost of living? The housing crisis? Collapsing healthcare?
"Increasing competition" without lowering prices is meaningless. Protectionism is fine, so long as we generally benefit from it.
Government-controlled protectionism is supposed to be good - and in a functioning democracy should benefit the people over businesses all of the time. The problem we have is far-(self)-righteous parties whose members only care about themselves and those who pad their pockets with bribes and "donations".
Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.
That's how markets work.
There's value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that's a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.
The two things are only loosely connected. The unprecedented wealth and income disparity shows that there are no improvements in efficiency that cannot be clawed back and stolen from the public purse.
If the market isn't performing its function then that is when the government needs to step in and change the rules.
In this case our grocers aren't competing on price enough, so they'd be adding more.
There are other options. If the government operated a store where there were guaranteed prices on certain goods and they were available in sufficient quantities, it would effectively peg the price of those goods in the rest of the market as well. This could be a cooperative or something similar.
Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.
Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that "increasing competition" meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I'm really surprised that a party called "Canada future" is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you're coming from.