Myths About Competition in the Global Economy Harm Humanity and Our Planet

By: Raksha Kopparm (Washington Center for Equitable Growth)

Competition around the globe is facing a crisis today. Mega corporations benefit from neoliberal ideologies and lax enforcement of the antitrust laws. Growing market power among fewer and fewer firms harms workers, new firms, consumers, and, more broadly, most of humanity and our planet. A powerful clutch of corporate executives earn more money and gain more power while workers face worsening conditions, declining worker power, and reduced pay and benefits while communities around the world suffer from growing environmental crises.

These trends underpin a new book, Competition is Killing Us: How Big Business is Harming Our Society and Planet—and What To Do About It, by Michelle Meagher. She argues that antitrust laws in the developed economies and around the globe have done little to protect not just new competitive entrants but also vulnerable communities and our planet as a whole.

Meagher, a senior policy fellow at the University College London Centre for Law, Economics and Society and co-founder of the Balanced Economy Project, calls current antitrust and corporate laws “arcane spheres of regulation” that have failed to execute upon their responsibilities. Yet she believes that a reassignment of power and a redefinition of antitrust and corporate law are the keys to holding corporate power accountable…

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