this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
114 points (98.3% liked)

Canada

7196 readers
574 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Communities


🍁 Meta


πŸ—ΊοΈ Provinces / Territories


πŸ™οΈ Cities / Local Communities


πŸ’ SportsHockey

Football (NFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Football (CFL)

  • List of All Teams: unknown

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


πŸ’» Universities


πŸ’΅ Finance / Shopping


πŸ—£οΈ Politics


🍁 Social and Culture


Rules

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:

https://lemmy.ca


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Archive: [ https://archive.is/VkJDP ]

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No, if they aren't competing then the government should take stronger action than taxing them. We have more tools than this.

The Nash equilibrium for high entry industries (especially in a country like Canada where investors loathe anything new or risky) is to always charge what your competitors do, never lower.

You can charge them more taxes to which they'll just adjust their prices to compensate for reduced shareholder returns (while blaming the tax for their prices). They'll also find ways to hide earnings or wash them to reduce their tax burden.

The only solution is to break the equilibrium. Introduce a new player (by nationalizing one of them, even if only temporarily) which actually operates based on a fixed profit ratio instead. Or implement an emergency control which limits shareholder returns beyond some threshold.

The Conservatives will complain about the free market but an efficient market for strategic resources is more important than a free oligarchy. This should be Trudeau's "just watch me" moment.