LET’S PLAY MONOPOLY!

(Kimberly Amadeo, Andrew Beattie, P Areeda & L. Kaplow)

(Douglas A. McIntyre, Frazer Chronicle)

 

A tube of Colgate toothpaste costs $3.29; the same size of Gleem runs about the same, and believe it or not, Aquafresh, across town at CVC is also about the same, so much for shopping around town for the best buy.

 

Remember the old days, when gasoline stations would have gas wars, one station would drop its price by a nickel, and the guy across the street would drop his a dime, I often wonder whatever happened to those heady days real supply and demand. Seems as if business wised up, and found out that they had a corner on the market, and could charge whatever they wanted to.

 

I’ll bet there were meetings behind closed doors, late at night, where a bunch of gasoline station owners got together with their suppliers and, over the grease rack, and a bunch of cigarette and cigar smoking, and a few beers, gasoline prices per gallon were agreed upon for several months at a time, I just know it’s true.

 

Used to be that your grocer didn’t necessarily want a pound of flesh, just maybe 4 or 5 ounces, cause he knew that Floyd, the Sunoco guy across the street was gonna need at least 6 ounces of your flesh for the 4 tires that you’re going to need. And of course the new roof that Joe, of Roofs R Us was gonna install would take at least 6 ounces from you. Pretty quick a guy’s wallet looked like a grizzled piece of kicked in the corner, stepped on, and forgotten hamburger.

 

People used to work with one another, everybody was kind of in the same boat, and nobody wanted to make waves…..cause they were all in exactly the same boat. It was a gentler time, a slower time, a time when people actually stopped to smell the roses, and I don’t mean Four Roses.

 

TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING

I go to Wal-Mart all the time, I love to shop at the Box-Store, prices are usually good, and the array of products seems to be wide and varied. Sure I’ve heard about slave labor overseas, how Wal-Mart is the biggest and baddest of all the super store, and I have no doubt that it is true.

 

I used to drive for a living, and I delivered to all kinds of places like Wal-Mart, but first I of course picked up the freight I was supposed to deliver. Wal-Mart has distribution centers all over the place, either in state, or regions, depending on the population of the area, the state, or the region.

 

To me, it seems like good business for a Box Store, like Wal-Mart to buy in huge quantities, like by the ship-full, or the train-car. Everybody knows when you buy by bulk, you get a better price. I simply took advantage of the philosophy…..like millions of others do, especially in this time of financial belt tightening.

 

Competition against Wal-Mart at least in my region comes from Target; I can’t really include Kmart because they lately seem to be a business in flux. Target is kind-of-competition with Wal-Mart, but almost not really. To me, if anything, Target seems to be a Johnny come lately to the industry of the Big-Box atmosphere.

 

However I have noticed that Wal-Mart does not quite carry the amount of merchandise that they used to, aisles are strongly devoid of back-up products, kind of like Wal-Mart arbitrarily set the amount of a product that they will offer, like first come, first serve.

During my travels as a big rig driving, I took notes about some of the most ruthless of the business concerns that I hauled freight for. Of course I didn’t pick and chose the customer, the company that I drove for did, and actually it was the dispatcher’s job to arrange what is called haul back fright, if nothing then to pay the fuel bill.

 

Wal-Mart was by far the worst company to deal with for its venders, Wal-Mart set the prices, no dickering around, they sit the price and that was it. Almost without exception, by the 1990’s every vender who dealt with Wal-Mart caved in to their suggested wholesale prices.

 

In the old days, venders set the wholesale prices, and that was pretty much it, but today, in the Box business world, the roles and position of power has changed, it’s almost like the inmates are running the prisons, kind of a really scary time in history.

 

OKAY SO LET’S PLAY MONOPOLY

A monopoly is either what the government says it is, or what a dominant company’s competitors call it, however the only opinion counts is, of course the government. Believe it or not, the seminal legislation that determines monopolistic behavior is the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. Theodore Roosevelt’s administration used it to effectively break up Standard Oil. In the 20^th century, the Justice Department’s battle with AT&T lasted from 1974 until 1982 and ended when the company agreed to spin off all of its local operating companies.

 

Identifying monopolies in today’s business world isn’t really very hard to do, the morphing that companies do almost on a continuing basis does cloudy up the water a bit, but if you concentrate, and follow the money, a person can usually came up at the right destination.

 

In today’s business world, whether locally, regionally, at the state or national level, the secret isn’t how much money you have, it’s how much you can borrow…..never, ever use your own money. This isn’t my rule; it comes from economists, business planners, a fellow who have already made their pot full of money off from somebody else’s money.

 

There are companies out there in the business world that I’ve never heard of; there are giants of industry that I wouldn’t know if they stepped up to the urinal next to me to relieve themselves. I think, basically it’s the way they want it, to travel across the ocean, and meet another ship, and pass it in the quite and darkness of the night.

 

The American Revolutionary War was fought so that each man could have the freedom to make his own choice. We exercise that right every day of our lives when we make a stop at the local grocery store for pork chops, or stop at Wal-Mart or some other Big Box outlet to buy a shirt. We enjoy the ultimate choice whenever we hit the verity stores of today.

 

My wife and I shop at a regional Super Market, Woodmen’s, who has 3 stores in Illinois, and 11 in Wisconsin. They have literally dozens of brand names…..and a bunch of off brand names for your choice, however, I read some of the labels, and guess what, some have a big connection to brand name products, they are in fact made by brand name companies.

 

Luxottica makes dozens of different brand named sunglasses, but they still are all Luxottica products, maybe seconds, with some sort of flaw. No matter the brand name, be it Oakley, Ray-Ban, Revo, Vogue, DKNY, or BVLGARI, Luxottica is, or was the maker.

 

If you good to Lens Crafters, and get lousy service, or can’t get the satisfaction you figure you deserve, your free to go across the street to Pearle Vision, or Sears or Target optical departments for a better price, or service, or quality of product…..however poor baby, you’re not getting away from Luxottica…..cause they own them too!

 

Why else did you figure that these rip-off artists could charge you $200 for a piece of plastic and two miniature hinges that take special diamond cutter screw-drivers to tighten. And…..what if somebody came up with some sort of mind control mini chip, hell they could slip it into that $200 piece of plastic, and our freedom would really be over.

 

Remember a few years ago, when a bunch of cats and dogs got either sick or died, everybody was up in arms, there seemed to be so many companies out there that were distributing tainted animal foods, what to do?  There were at least 150 brands of animal food that seemed to be tainted, how in hell could that be, were they all using the same water, or the same grains?

 

If you buy Eukanuba, Iams, Nutro, Hy-Vee, Triumph, or Priority, they did, and do use the same water, and grains to make their cat and dog food, there owned by a Canadian company, Menu Foods processes the animal food in big vats, cans it up and then puts different brand names on the stuff.

 

Not to worry about Menu Foods, they were bought out by Simmons Pet Food, and they, Simmons has an even bigger gallery of brand names that they make pet foot for. One can say that it’s only cats and dogs that are being affected by these conglomerates…..but not quite.

 

Did you ever eat corn on the cob, or canned corn, or derivatives of corn, you are eating Monsanto (TM), a huge biotech company. It’s not that they grow the lion’s share of corn in the field, no; they make their fortune from producing weed killer and seeds.

 

80% of all corn that goes into the ground in the United States is stamped with the Monsanto (TM) on it. Much of the corn seed used today is immune to Roundup, the world’s biggest selling herbicide in the world, and weeds hurt corn, so into the ground with the corn seed goes…..you guessed it, Roundup.

 

And computers, with all those innovative devises that I really don’t know much about, well don’t argue over which is better, whether you’re a Mac or a PC, you’re probably a Quanta. Both the Mac and the PC are put together in Taiwan on the same assembly line by those little folks who work 80 hours a week, live in company homes, and make $60 bucks a week.

 

Sadly monopoly has taken over the beer world as well, I recall last year that Budweiser was bought out by some Japanese, and I thought at the time that it was a bad move…..I was right, even though regular or Bud lite remains tasty, the new brewer seems to be flooding the market with all sorts of specialty beers, I wonder how long regular Bud, or Bud lite will hang on.

 

InBev owns Stella Artois, Alexander Keith’s Bass, Grupo Modelo, which makes most of the beers in Mexico, Corona, Modelo, and Pacifico. This doesn’t affect me, as I mentioned, I’m a Bud man, or in the illustrious words of the Miller Brewing Company…..”Body built by Miller.”

 

 

 

 

 

ANTITRUST LAWS TODAY

Government set about to establish laws that would protect consumers from the gouging practices of big business back before the turn of the 20^th century…..they must have done so for a reason, unlike what conservative keep preaching…..government is too big.

 

Antitrust laws, or competition laws, are legal rules to promote fair competition in the marketplace. The laws are designed to prevent actions that might hurt consumers or unfairly harm other businesses. Mostly monopolies hurt the consumer, it blights the general public from price comparing…..remember the toothpaste, or gasoline.

 

Today companies simply merge, or are bought out by the competition, resulting a pretty much a set pricing system that we, as consumers have to deal with for most of our purchases. Without competition, that exists today in America, in my opinion, we are headed to a new place that has never been visited by the United States.

 

Today the Federal Government is relatively docile with regards to enforcement of mergers and Antitrust law. The Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, the United States Federal Trades Commission, (FTC) was formed in 1914, and the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act all were established to govern business, but today, mergers and the establishment of monopoly practices has the United States reeling.

 

Each of our Antitrust acts were set into motion for a reason…..and today, our elected officials have decided to not enforce the rules, regulations, and the laws that govern our business community…..how long can we survive with the current activity?

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!