Eliot Spitzer Speaks for Competition

To my mind, one of the most effective forces of an open economy is the fact that it produces the compulsion for firms to compete to supply services and goods. In essence, the competing firms have to work for the good of their clients in order to work for themselves. Writing in Slate Magazine, Eliot Spitzer makes an eloquent case for why the GM corporation on the one side and the Security exchange Commission are now in the uneviable state.

For the SEC, he refuses to accept that the series of unethical practices that some institutions and individuals engaged could not be promptly detected because of the lack of resources and statutory authority. Invoking the virtues of economic competition, Eliot Spitzer states that the SEC was merely interested in protecting its turf without responding to the threats that existed. Mr. Spitzer is not only correct in this assertion but I would add that it is clear that an augmentation of its powers would not help the regulatory institution at all.

Taking on GM, the piece states correctly that this corporation opted to negotiate a safe path with the unions and eschewed economic competition. This preference for protection as opposed to competition led the corporation to place the interests of the unions as a paramount feature and forgot to supply the appropriate automobiles that its customers would purchase. It is difficult to disagree with Spitzer that the reluctance to expose firms to competition soon shows its poor results. While it is clear that the US economy is one of the most open and that is more tolerant to competition in comparison to others, the piece that its creative destruction is required cannot be refuted.