Imagine that you have a number of businesses under your control, that combined together, control nearly everything in your country and since we imagine this, why not the world. You are technically a monopoly. It sounds bad, doesn't it?
But let's just investigate the conditions before we jump to a conclusion.
If you are a private business and you are technically or practically a monopoly, how could that be?
There are supposed to be laws that prevent you from being a monopoly. The reason that monopolies are not allowed is because the consumer does not have a choice and the business can set its prices without fear from competition. In the long run it also means that services can become stagnant and inefficient since there is no other competitor to drive them towards more modern, efficient and economic solutions. Most importantly it also means that you have become so crucial for everyday life, that you can dictate rules that perpetuate your monopoly and make you even stronger. In effect the leverage you have against the government is so strong that the government can not go against you, without critically affecting the life of their citizens. The monopoly has also become a booby trap.
Of course this is the view of the consumer. The businessman can claim that if he offers the best product/service, why should he be stopped or prevented from taking the whole market. In fact the obstacles of monopoly laws that he has to overcome, distract him from his quality business and make his products/services more expensive for the consumer. In the end the owners/shareholders get to pocket the profits and if the product is crucial and good, deservedly so.
But what if the monopoly is a public one?
Why does EU and neo liberals fight the public monopolies, especially in the energy, water, communication, transportation, health and education fields, where it is crucial and humane that all people have access to them, practically for free - but actually paid by taxes - or at a very low affordable cost? And the profits return to the people. Why the government wants to limit itself in a mere regulatory position, when the politicians can run the public businesses as a giant monopoly, allowing competition, if any, to actually work for the benefit of the consumer. If a private business wants to compete in these sectors, let them, but without the help of their elected buddies, buying the public infrastructure for peanuts and then doing nothing to maintain it, raising the cost of services and pocketing the profits.
A recent example in Greece is ELTA, the national postal service. During the COVID-19 extended lock-downs, it was the only postal service in Greece that managed to deliver goods in reasonable time, despite the terrible overload of mail. The extended branching in Greece which due to its very difficult terrain needs many locations to function and serve all people, helped greatly. But even after the lock-downs, many people had changed habits and the electronic commerce meant that the volume of mail and parcels got bigger, so ELTA could actually continue to work and with the advantages it had, make a huge profit. The plan to devalue and close or sell ELTA was set way before the lock-downs and is carried out even today, despite obviously been illogical and harmful for the Greek citizens.
The problem is this: the current government, but also all governments before them, try to devalue ELTA in order to sell it or close it down. Their petty excuse is that the postal service is funded directly by the taxation and this constitutes unfair competition towards the other private companies. It goes without saying that the problem is not as simple as that. Let me explain. The governments tried hard to make this happen.
The series of actions are there for everyone to see:
1.Took away from the company the healthy Postal Savings Bank and practically gave it away to a private sector bank. At the same time, under the advice of people placed there by the government, ELTA took up investments that lost money, for example as a provider of electricity(!) to compete with the public electrical company DEI. This alone speaks volumes. Of course it failed miserably. https://www.news247.gr/energia/oristiki-exodos-ton-elta-apo-tin-promitheia-revmatos-ton-maio/
2.The postal service in Greece had an obligation to serve all remote areas in Greece. Greece's geography is hard for transportation and therefore postal services. There are several companies that simply do not serve difficult areas or charge way too much. This is also true for the power companies, transportation means, schools and health care. This means that the remote areas will be depopulated, as a result. Which also means that the government that often cries for the vast populations in the cities, will either has to pay vast sums of money to help the people cover these extra costs or simply won't care. *
3.The postal service provides services that are vital to a nation. It can not be seen as merely sending letters and products, but rather as a crucial part of society and the economy. The fact that private postal services operate based on profit, means that they will not be able or willing to do whatever a public postal service is obligated to do, even without a profit for a specific transaction. So, as we see with other privatized sectors (maritime transportation, education, health, security, pension programs, etc) when there is no public sector to act as a counter balance / competition, people are lacking those services. But if you give away the healthy and profitable parts of a company and you reserve only the difficult and unprofitable cases, the balance sheet will always look bad.
4.It is pretty peculiar that during these lock-down periods, ELTA management chose to get rid of senior personnel, by giving them early pensions and bonus for early retirement (!), close down more than 200 shops around Greece (there are small towns that do not have an ELTA shop anymore!) and actually making its system for posting quite complex and slow for the average user. At the same time a peculiar scheme of price hiking gave the ultimate blow. If a private owner had ELTA, he would have thrived and beaten down all his competition, making extraordinary profits at the same time. And if it was run as a public business, the consumer - citizen would have benefited from it. This was an orchestrated plan by the government to render the services unbearable, with inexperienced new personnel, bad electronic system (remember the hacking some years ago, that took the system out for over two weeks?) and fewer physical points, with extra unrelated to the postal work and least profitable choirs, like paying bills, selling gifts, etc. They are actually tearing it down, to either sell it as a failed company, or to close it altogether. Both results lay the ground free for the private postal services to take over. The result for the society and commerce will be devastating.
