By experiencing the direct benefits of Commercial enrichment
acquired through a Federal license program, such as being an SEC
registered stockbroker, or an ATF licensed manufacturer of
fireworks, which is an obvious pursuit of federally participated
profit or gain. Several federal monopolies were designed
specifically for the existing participants to experience
intensive Commercial enrichment in, as the net effect of a
regulatory jurisdiction is to discourage potential new market
entrants from competing with established corporate titans. In
any market there are only so many potential customers available,
and excluding new upstarts allows existing Grandfathers to have
a bigger slice of the pie they would not otherwise be
experiencing. For example, the creation of National Banks by the
Congress, through the Comptroller of the Currency, is one such
monopoly designed to enrich existing market participants, while
shutting out new banks and damaging the end consumer. In any one
demographic banking district, there is only so much business to
be had; cutting out new entrants keeps a bigger slice of the
banking pie for the owners.1
The secondary consequences of restraining the number of new
market entrants politically are elevated prices the end consumer
winds up paying, constricted services and retarded technological
innovations.2
1 For example, in 1967, F.W. Pitts wanted to bring a new
National Bank into the Hartsville, South Carolina area. He
submitted an application to the Comptroller of the Currency for
a license certificate, and the request was denied. Reason:
"... we were unable to reach a favorable conclusion as to the
need factor."
- CAMP VS. PITTS, 411 U.S. 138, at 139 (1973).
That is correct: The Comptroller denied the application because
the community was already adequately served by other banks, and
there was no "need," seemingly, for the new proposed national
bank. In this way, the existing banks in Hartsville shut out a
new impending competitor. The letter from the Comptroller, in
turning down the License request, listed the banks already in
the Hartsville area and the deposits they carried [CAMP, id., at
139]. The Comptroller seemed to be very concerned about
enhancing the financial enrichment of the existing banks; and at
no time was there any discussion about the improved service the
end consumer would be experiencing, or of the very competitive
rates of interest on loans that new upstarts searching for
business charge. But like the tightly regulated issuance of
local Television Station licenses by the FCC, the Comptroller of
the Currency is on a mission: To make sure that the owners of
existing banks are very well fed, and so throwing Torts at the
public is nothing they are going to concern themselves with. For
a summary of the laws creating obstacles for new prospective
banks to go into business, see the Editor's Notes called BANK
CHARTERS, BRANCHING, HOLDING COMPANY AND MERGER LAWS:
COMPETITION FRUSTRATED in 71 Yale Law Journal 592 (1962).
2 The telephone companies have exclusive geographical districts
assigned to them with no competitors -- a pure monopoly; and if
the FCC had not intervened to allow third party telephones and
other equipment to be connected to local telephone company
lines, you would never have been able to have automatic
redialing on your phones -- such nice little effort savers are
the result of competition, and not your local phone company, who
could care less. Computers have been used extensively for
telephone switching since the middle 1960's, and the continuing
refusal of the phone company to assign a few byte locations in
their computer's memory to remember your last dialed number,
occurred for just one reason: They have a monopoly, they have
their enrichment pipeline set up, and they don't care about you
at all [a relative statement that will be viewed as being
excessively harsh by those who never bothered to give any
thought to evaluating, comparatively, the service attitude
manifested by businessmen in a competitive operating atmosphere,
with those businessmen who don't need to concern themselves with
competitive pressures.] Yes, MINIMALISM rules in all
uncompetitive environments, Commercial and otherwise.
