Competition - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Institute

Competition - Ludwig von Mises - Mises Institute: "The classical economists favored the abolition of all trade barriers preventing people from competing on the market. Such restrictive laws, they explained, result in shifting production from those places in which natural conditions of production are more favorable to places in which they are less favorable. They protect the less efficient man against his more efficient rival. They tend to perpetuate backward technological methods of production. In short they curtail production and thus lower the standard of living. In order to make all people more prosperous, the economists argued, competition should be free to everybody." "They advocated the nullification of privileges barring people from access to certain trades and markets."

"Some fifty years ago people used to declare: You cannot compete with the railroad companies; it is impossible to challenge their position by starting competing lines; in the field of land transportation there is no longer competition. The truth was that at that time the already-operating lines were by and large sufficient." "The bigness and the economic "power" of the railroad companies did not impede the emergence of the motorcar and the airplane."

"Today people assert the same with regard to various branches of big business: You cannot challenge their position; they are too big and too powerful. But competition does not mean that anybody can prosper by simply imitating what other people do. It means the opportunity to serve the consumers in a better or cheaper way without being restrained by privileges granted to those whose vested interests the innovation hurts."

"The start is much more difficult for a poor boy than for the son of a wealthy man. But the consumers are not concerned about the problem of whether or not the men who shall serve them start their careers under equal conditions. Their only interest is to secure the best possible satisfaction of their needs. If the system of hereditary property is more efficient in this regard, they prefer it to other less-efficient systems."