Bogus Choices

Another day without much television viewing and not much personal experience beyond spending time with the family.  But I did get an idea based on something that has been bouncing around Google+ all day.  It has to do with consolidation of brands.



The posting is really focused on the food industry but it can be applied to almost any industry you can think of.  Every time there is a buyout of a company the government is supposed to review things to be sure that it isn't going to stifle competition to protect consumers.  The problem is that big business puts lobbyists in from of every government that it can.  Here in the United States these lobbyists have really taken over things.  They line the pockets of our representatives and donate huge sums of money to campaigns in order to get what they want (but that is really a different rant).


But back to the rant!  If you go to the grocery store you may think you have a lot of choice as to where you cash is going.  But look at this picture.  I'm not positive that it is 100% accurate since I can't verify the source but it is fairly accurate based on my knowledge from being in food service for 20 years.  Take a close look, it doesn't matter where you spend your money, it will go to one of 10 companies.  How are we being protected by this?  Less choice gives these companies more power.


What makes these consolidations even worse is the fact that these companies create and/or join trade groups.  The function of these groups isn't to come up with standards, it is to perform some kind of price fixing that is legal because all of their prices are different enough that the government can't prove anything.


It would be really nice if the government would start doing what we elected them to do and protect the consumer.  A good start would be to make trade groups illegal since their only purpose is to empty our wallets.