Imagining ‘The Good Society’

There is a critical role for markets and the dynamics they provide: but stability and social justice can only be secured with the simultaneous and planned provision of social and economic infrastructure, labour market regulation, and welfare.

Competitive markets spur innovation, and can provide the logic and impetus for improving efficiency and productivity.

On the other hand - competitive labour markets - without the counter-balance of strong unions, labour market regulation and industry-wide bargaining - can lead to a “race to the bottom” in wages and conditions.

Under capitalism, also, consumption and growth become ends in themselves.

Whereas it can be preferable to enjoy and make use of free time, many businesses prefer longer hours. A social order more concerned with “quality of life” and “human need” could well accommodate shorter working hours, promoting greater flexibility and allowing for personal development, as well as social and family life.

And such an order might also provide support and recognition for the “domestic economy” and the contributions of volunteers - whose efforts go unrecognised by the “market”.

Furthermore: capitalism is prone to “market failure”. Sometimes markets are wasteful. And sometimes markets are unjust.

“Corrections” to overproduction see the pain of these falling on investors and labour. Perhaps, in part, this is the price we pay for the benefits of competition: especially responsive and innovative markets.

That said, in some cases competitive markets can lead to radically increased cost structures for which consumers must ultimately pay (for instance: areas properly held by “natural public monopoly”). One such example is the communications infrastructure in Australia. So-called “reforms” have seen the privatisation of one-time public telecommunications monopoly, Telstra, and the provision of two layers of mobile phone communications infrastructure.

The cost for “competition” in communications infrastructure is a radical increase in the cost structures of the industry.

Recent plans by the Rudd Labor Government also threaten the creation of a “part-private” monopoly in Australia’s proposed fibre-optic network. At first glance, the scenario may seem to be one of “Catch 22”: consumers might be fleeced by private monopoly, or they may be “slugged” as a consequence of radically expanded cost structures in the provision of infrastructure.

The answer, though: one which neo-liberal ideologues refuse to face; is that there remain areas of activity best suited - for all concerned - to “natural public monopoly”.