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Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;

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Mostrando postagens com marcador monopolios. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador monopolios. Mostrar todas as postagens

segunda-feira, 14 de outubro de 2013

Ron Paul: contra o monopolio estatal na educacao - Mises Daily

Mises Daily, on October 14, 2013

Editor's Note: This selection is taken from Chapter 5 of Ron Paul's new book The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System.

The free-market principle of open entry is challenged by governmental restrictions on access to consumer markets. There are many official justifications for these restrictions, but the main one is this: “Customers do not know what is good for them.” They do not know what products to buy, what prices to pay, or what arrangements to negotiate with respect to return and replacement. Customers are in fact woefully ignorant of what they really need, so the state enters the marketplace to restrict what customers are legally allowed to purchase. The idea here is that state officials know what customers really need as distinguished from what customers are willing to pay for.
One of the justifications for this is that advertising deludes customers. This means that customers are considered not able to sort out fact from fiction when they read or see an advertisement. It is interesting that the same advertising agencies hired by businesses to sell products are also hired by politicians to produce advertisements in election years. In other words, advertising is accepted as a legitimate way to motivate people to take action during election years, but is placed under suspicion when it comes to advertising products and services. People in their capacity as voters are supposedly perfectly capable of making accurate decisions based on advertising. On the other hand, those same people in their capacity as customers supposedly are incapable of making accurate decisions based on advertising. This is utterly illogical, but it is basic to understanding all modern governments in the West ...
Whenever the state intervenes in a market to restrict entry by sellers, it results in higher prices. Customers are not able to buy the kinds of goods and services they want, at a price they are willing to pay. So the producers who would otherwise have entered the market are forced to enter other markets. These markets are less profitable than the restricted markets. Customers in the regulated markets are worse off, and so are marginal suppliers who leave those markets.
We can see this principle at work in the market for education. The supply of education is limited by government restrictions on academic certification. Teachers must go through a specified regimen at the college level in order to be eligible to teach in the nation’s tax-funded school systems. This reduces the supply of teachers who can legally be hired by local school districts. Furthermore, restrictions on school construction by private entrepreneurs limit the amount of competition tax-funded schools face.
So, parents are compelled to send their children to school, but the state restricts the number of schools available to parents. This creates a near monopoly of education, kindergarten through twelfth grade, for the state. The state uses tax funding to build schools, and it uses the regulatory system to restrict the creation of rival schools. This is the classic mark of a monopoly.
The free-market solution is open entry and competition. Competition may be in the form of quality. Some parents want very-high-quality education for their children, and are willing to pay a great deal of money to purchase it. They would not have to pay as much money if there were open entry into the local market for schools. Other parents cannot afford the best education for their children, because they do not have enough money. So, they want price-competitive education. This is also made available by entrepreneurs in the field of private education. These entrepreneurs can decide which programs are affordable for which parents, and which programs will meet the demands of specific parents. As more schools come onstream, the range of choice for parents increases. This is the standard definition of what constitutes economic growth. Economic growth takes place when customers can buy more goods and services than they were able to buy prior to the increase in economic growth ...
Bureaucrats in the field of education, which is almost exclusively nonprofit education, have a bias against price-competitive academic programs. They assume that these programs are of low quality. They think it is a good idea to close the market to sellers of any kinds of curriculum not certified by educational bureaucrats. They have greater control over the content and structure of education when they can restrict entry into the marketplace. In the name of helping children, these promoters of self-interested restrictions on entry conceal the fact that they are able to exercise greater power over education and then charge more for the privilege of doing so.
This is why libertarians believe that there should be open entry into the field of education. They do not trust state bureaucrats to act on behalf of parents, especially parents who have a particular view of the best methodology and content for the education of their children. The bureaucrats operate in their own self-interest, which is to expand their power and income.
This raises the issue of government regulation of schools. First, the government requires compulsory attendance. Second, in order to keep control over the content of the curriculum, governments establish rules and regulations governing those schools. Parents are not allowed to send their children to schools that do not meet these qualifications. The qualifications are set very high, so that not many schools can be established to compete against the public school system. This increases the power of the public school system, and the power of the bureaucrats who run the system.
An example of this kind of regulation can be seen in the requirement that private high schools have libraries of at least 1,500 books. States around America had this requirement or something similar to it in the 1990s. But a student in the early 1990s was able to carry a CD-ROM with 5,000 books on it: the Library of the Future. No matter. A CD-ROM and computer stations did not count as meeting the 1,500-book requirement. The books had to be physical, so tax money had to go toward that. Today students have access to hundreds of thousands of books by means of the cell phones in their pockets. But accredited high schools must still have physical libraries. These libraries must be run by someone with a degree in library science. Conclusion: The library requirement has nothing to do with the number of books in the library. It has everything to do with increasing the cost of building a facility that qualifies as a school that meets the government’s regulations.
The goal of academic regulation is to limit the supply of schools that compete against public schools. This is done in the name of guaranteeing the educational quality of the school, thereby protecting the students. Yet the academic performance of the public schools continues to decline, and has done so since the early 1960s. The scores on the SAT and ACT exams continue to fall. The high point was in the early 1960s. So, regulation has not been successful in guaranteeing the quality of education. But it has been quite successful in restricting entry into the field of education.
In the 1980s there was a great battle over homeschooling. States around the nation passed laws prohibiting parents from substituting homeschooling for schooling in either a tax-funded school or a private school. The private schools were so expensive that only a handful of parents could afford them. This meant that parents would simply have to send their children to the public schools. The appearance of homeschooling in the 1970s and ’80s represented a threat to this strategy of restricting the supply of competing educational programs. States prosecuted parents for teaching their children at home.
A major case was tried in Texas in 1985, Leeper v. Arlington, in which a coalition of homeschool advocates brought a class-action suit against the state. The state lost the case in the state supreme court in 1994. The court required school districts to compensate the parents of the children who brought the suit. This case sent a clear message to local school districts in Texas. Overnight, they removed most of the restrictions against homeschooling. The state of Texas became very friendly toward homeschooling. But it took a court case to achieve this goal ...
There should not be anything resembling a government monopoly of education. Standards that govern the public school system locally should not be imposed on parents who decide to remove their children from that system. Without freedom of parental choice in education, the state will pursue a policy of extending its monopoly over education. Tenured, state-funded bureaucrats will then use this monopoly to screen out ideas that call into question the legitimacy of government interference in many areas of life, including education. The government does not have to burn books in order to persuade the next generation of voters of ideas that favor the government. The government need only screen out books and materials that are hostile to the expansion of the state.
Note: The views expressed in Daily Articles on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Dr. Ron Paul is a former member of Congress and a Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute. See Ron Paul's article archives.

quinta-feira, 14 de fevereiro de 2013

Happy Valentine's Monopoly Day!: worse off...

Certamente, as passagens vão ficar mais caras, o serviço pior, e o desemprego setorial vai aumentar...
Viagens aéreas estão ficando piores do que ônibus centro-americanos, atualmente...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

American Airlines and US Airways announced that they were merging, the last of the big American carriers to do so. The deal creates one of the world's biggest airlines.

quinta-feira, 13 de dezembro de 2012

Noticias de um duopolio: as companhias aereas...

Rio-Fortaleza a R$ 4,4 mil – via Buenos Aires

Duopólio TAM-GOL causa estrago no bolso de quem deseja passar o Réveillon no Rio ou Natal

por Leandro Mazzini
fonte | A A A
Desdenhando de uma CPI em 2013, o duopólio TAM-GOL causa estrago no bolso de quem deseja passar o Réveillon no Rio ou Natal, alguns dos destinos mais procurados. Quem comprar as últimas passagens vai pagar até R$ 5 mil por apenas um trecho, revela pesquisa da coluna, para voos em 29 de Dezembro (sábado). O surreal é o da Gol, em parceria com Emirates: Rio-Fortaleza a R$ 4.380: sai do Galeão para Ezeiza, em Buenos Aires, volta para Guarulhos e enfim decola para o Nordeste. São 26 horas de voo.
 Melhor nadando
 Os manauaras sofrerão. Manaus-Rio pela TAM sairá a R$ 4.988 e taxas, com duração de 15 horas (1 parada) – um voo direto dura 4h. A Gol cobrará R$ 3.367, com 9h de voo.
Volta ao mundo
  Manaus-Natal pela Azul, com três paradas (Belém, Recife e Fortaleza) ficará a R$ 4.033 em 9h de voo. Rio-Fernando de Noronha com duas paradas e 10h custará R$ 3.220.
 CPI no Hangar
 O deputado Osmar Junior (PcdoB-PI) trabalha para que o próximo presidente da Câmara abra a CPI das Aéreas. Dia desses, Teresina-Brasília saiu a R$ 3.100 pela TAM.

quarta-feira, 21 de novembro de 2012

O ceu carrtelizado (nos EUA); no Brasil, oligopolizado...

Competição, mercados livres no céu, é o que não temos. As viagens ficam mais longas e mais caras...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Op-Ed Contributor

A Free Market in the Sky

Washington
Ron Regé Jr.
AS the holiday season approaches, the major airlines are signaling to some passengers to take a hike. At least that’s what travelers might infer from the smaller number of flights being scheduled at many of the nation’s airports.
Between 2007 and 2012, airlines cut the number of domestic passenger flights by 14 percent, according to the Department of Transportation — with the biggest drops occurring at midsize and smaller regional airports. The five heartland hubs of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Memphis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis have lost a stunning 40 percent of their scheduled flights.
The reason is simple: airlines have decided that the best way to earn a healthy return on their investment is to maintain tight discipline on capacity. That’s a fancy way of saying they want their planes to fly as full as sardine cans. And the way they’ve been accomplishing this is by concentrating service on the big domestic and international markets and by cutting flights in smaller, less traveled ones.
That’s smart business, of course. Why expend the same dollars on jet fuel, pilots and Sun Chips on a flight that’s likely to leave half-empty from Memphis when you can trim the number of scheduled departures from the same airport and really pack them in on each flight?
But this, of course, leaves Aunt Sally in Sarasota, Fla., with fewer options to visit family during the holidays; it leaves millions of us with longer boarding and exiting delays on our planes — and, yes, it helps drive up fare prices, too. It’s that old rule of supply and demand. Travelocity, an online booking site, has found airline ticket prices for this pre-Thanksgiving period to be 10 percent higher on average than last year.
Unfortunately for travelers, this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. With five airlines now serving 85 percent of the domestic market — four, if American Airlines and US Airways merge, as industry analysts expect — the major carriers are worrying less about the one factor that could disrupt their cozy, cram-’em-in strategy: competition.
That is, unless policy makers do what they should have done a long time ago and allow foreign airlines, including discount carriers like Ryanair and global players like Qantas and British Airways, to serve domestic routes in the United States. Why, after all, should an industry that has ingeniously used free-market principles to squeeze the most revenue out of each middle seat be protected from competing in a real free market?
As things stand now, the United States allows foreign airlines to serve its major cities as part of international agreements — conventions that have been around for decades. Foreign airlines have never posed a threat to national security or to the safety of air travelers; there’s no indication that such carriers have resisted American security measures in the past or any reason to think they’d violate any protocols required for domestic routes either.
Competition from foreign airlines would put downward pressure on wages, something that union workers may object to. But by reducing fares and expanding service, it would also increase the demand for air travel and related services — thus, presumably, creating additional jobs during a time of persistently high unemployment.
Airline travelers, in fact, have already benefited significantly from increased competition among international carriers. Beginning with a successful agreement with the Netherlands in 1992, the United States has pressed for liberal free-trade pacts, called “open skies” agreements, with several nations.
In collaboration with Jia Yan of Washington State University, I have estimated that travelers have gained at least $5 billion annually as a result of lower international fares and additional flights generated by open skies agreements.
By allowing foreign airlines to serve American domestic markets, the process of creating a truly free market in airline services here would be complete and, as in the case of international markets, would provide travelers the benefit of more flight choices and lower fares.
Naturally, domestic airlines are likely to oppose such a policy. But they should realize that their current strategy to maximize profits — reducing flights and raising fares — runs the danger of alienating the American flying public and spawning new regulation.
One possible solution is to take a half-step toward opening up domestic markets and allow foreign carriers to serve any midsize and regional airport in the United States that has lost service in the past few years. New entrants would be able to integrate those markets with their international routes, something that could put many smaller American cities on the global business map.
Soon, Aunt Sally might enjoy the service on Singapore Airlines en route to Cincinnati. It’s a short flight from Sarasota — but the hot face towels are a dream.
Clifford Winston is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and author of “Last Exit: Privatization and Deregulation of the U.S. Transportation System.”

sexta-feira, 30 de julho de 2010

Negociatas nas telecomunicacoes (4): ao fim e ao cabo, o consumidor está pior...

Dos três posts precedentes (haveria muito mais a postar sobre essas operações entre as empresas de telefonia, mas me contentei com apenas três), uma conclusão é possível (aliás, muitas seriam, mas me contento com uma):

O cliente, o consumidor, o assinante de serviços de telefonia, que somos todos nós, sai mais prejudicado do que antes, pois o setor não apenas se consolida como um "tripólio" -- ou seja, um monopólio a três, provavelmente com pouca concorrência efetiva entre elas, a não ser para efeitos de marketing -- como o governo, mais uma vez, demonstra que está a serviço das empresas, não dos cidadãos, que ele se envolve em negociatas obscuras (bota obscura nisso), e que continuaremos a pagar muito por serviços miseráveis e um atendimento lamentável, exasperador (como sabem todos aqueles que já tiveram de telefonar para esses nefandos números para falar com atendentes visivelmente despreparados para tratar de qualquer problema).

Somos reféns de carteis sequiosos de lucros, com o mínimo de investimento necessário, somos extorquidos pelo governo -- que fica com 4 de cada 10 reais que pagamos nas faturas de telefone, SEM TER FEITO ABSOLUTAMENTE NADA PARA ISSO -- e temos a sensação de estar sendo logrados a cada passo do sistema (sensação, não, certeza).

Meu diagnóstico final: somos roubados, todos os dias, em nossa posição de clientes (que segundo a teoria liberal deveria ser o ditador supremo do sistema capitalista) por causa de uma política vagabunda de telecomunicações, que consagra monopólios e carteis e que retira nossa renda sem qualquer contrapartida (a não ser a pretensamente regulatória, que também é vagabunda e está ao serviço das companhias, não dos cidadãos).

Caro leitor: eu, você, todos nós, estamos sendo roubados todos os dias por duas tribos de meliantes. Tenha certeza, também, que alguns traficantes de interesses estão ficando ricos, muito ricos, com toda essa promiscuidade entre governo e empresas, as poucas empresas que nos assaltam todos os dias, com a cumplicidade do governo.
Paulo R. Almeida
(Shanghai, 31/07/2010)