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I CAN HAS CAPITALIZM?

Stupid puff-piece on the BBC today entitled “Supermarkets ‘are too powerful’“, including this wonderful line:

almost 80% of suppliers said they had been put under pressure to lower prices

Really? How dare a customer ask a British business to lower their price! Don’t they know that a Briton’s profit margin is his castle? Someone get Gordon Brown on the case!

I’m sure that sounds offensive to the ears of a BBC journalist, whose organisation’s income is guaranteed by law and enforced by regular mafia-style shakedowns, but the (minority of) people in Scotland who work in the private sector will hardly be surprised or sympathetic.

Of course, this article isn’t really about simple market economics of competition, but specifically the anti-competitive, monopolistic policies of the supermarkets who after decades of growth, stifling almost all independent competition wield sufficient power to dictate terms to their suppliers. It’s one thing for a supplier to have to keep their prices in check in order to be competitive relative to their own market stablemates, but it’s another entirely for them to have to drop their prices to the point of having nearly zero margin because if they don’t they risk being dropped by one of their tiny list of clients.

The jist of the story is quite true; supermarkets wield unprecedented power over their suppliers, and apparently regularly engage in . Something ought to have been done about the Tesco empire 10 years ago, but sadly it’s now a little too late.

Hmm. Stuffed up HTML in the comment there. It was supposed to link the word ‘inethical practices’ and point to http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2128230,00.html.