"Cooperative enterprises address market failure: provide rural electricity or other utilities in sparsely populated areas; affordable healthy and organic foods; access to credit and banking services; access to affordable housing; access to quality affordable child or elder care; access to markets for culturally sensitive goods & arts."

#Cooperatives
#Scarcity
#MarketFailure
#Affordability
#Access

"Such poor performance leads MacCulloch to ask a provocative and essential question: how is it possible that these executives are 'so incompetently useless they can’t make a buck even when they have no competition?'. He notes that it is difficult to find another developed country where multiple virtual monopolies are effectively 'run at a loss' in terms of shareholder value ..."

#BryceEdwards, 2025

https://theintegrityinstitute.substack.com/p/integrity-briefing-are-business-leaders

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#monopolies #MarketFailure

@susankayequinn

"it's pollution in our lungs & exploitation of people & burning of the planet & degradation of civil society"

Economists refer to these as "externalities"... often not hidden (air pollution in LA is pretty obvious) as much as unaccounted for...

"Externalities often occur when the production or consumption of a product or service's private price equilibrium cannot reflect the true costs or benefits of that product or service for society as a whole.... since resources can be better allocated, externalities are an example of market failure."

👉 #MarketFailure 👈 is the key concept. So called #FreeMarkets are often incomplete, because not all of the #StakeHolders are at the bargaining table.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Even the oft quoted-out-of-context "libertarian" economist #FriedrichHayek allowed that there were some areas of economic activity that could not be addressed by free or open markets... #publichealth and #pollution to name just two.

[Graphic is from an article by Patrick Miner et al 2024.]