Recently in this space we talked about monopolies in capitalism and the risk that they embody.

My position, I review it, is that if a monopoly is created in a free market, it is because the company or companies that comprise it (oligopoly in that case) have provided the best customer service.

If it is the state regulations that create the monopoly (as in the case of the taxi license), then my position is in favor of removing those legal entry barriers to compete in the market. In general, when the left argues that capitalism leads to monopolies and that this is a problem, it is not very clear what the problem is that they identify.

They merely say that monopolies conspire against the general welfare, but not the way in which they do it. However, we have recently witnessed the decision of several large technology companies ("Big Tech"), such as Twitter, Google and Amazon, to remove Donald Trump from his ecosystem. Twitter permanently suspended the account of the US president. In addition, Apple, Google and Amazon removed the ability to download the application "Parler", a social network analogous to Twitter where there is no "censorship."

This led several to denounce the enormous power that Big Tech have over the information and opinions that can be accessed and to compare these companies with dictatorships or thought police.

I analyze two questions below:

1) Given that Big Tech widely dominate the communication market globally, does this prove that in capitalism there is a trend towards monopoly, as stated by Roxana Kreimer a few days ago?

2) Is it correct to compare the behavior of the Big Tech against Trump with that of a dictatorship or that of the police?

Capitalism, monopoly and China When capitalism is criticized, one usually looks at a situation that many find undesirable in the system and then conclude that said system "fails" or does not meet expectations.

However, these analyzes of comparing against existing alternatives are forgotten. Thus, for example, when Roxana Kreimer spoke of the tendencies of economic liberalism towards monopoly, she avoided saying that in communist countries the monopoly is total, so the situation should seem much worse to her.

In this case: which model is more prone to monopoly? The same question can be asked here: if we admit that Twitter, Facebook and Google are companies with such market power that they constitute an oligopoly in the new media sector, does this not prove that the tendency to monopoly exists in capitalism?

The answer is, not necessarily. In fact, we can compare this ecosystem with what happens in China, which has an alternative economic system. An article from the BBC explains that in China you cannot use WhatsApp, Twitter, or Google (the latter being blocked directly by the government), and that instead of YouTube or Facebook are Youku and QQ. In other words, in non-liberal China there is the same "oligopolistic" configuration of these types of companies, but as a result of state regulation, which not only blocks competition from foreign suppliers, but also supervises all the content that is published, institutionalizing a government censorship against citizens.

In conclusion: the current configuration of Big Tech does not prove that there is a tendency to monopoly in capitalism. China, which is not capitalist, or at least to an incredibly lesser extent than the United States, has a similar market configuration in this sector, but with the aggravation of state restrictions on competition and government monitoring and censorship of the content.

Thought Police Let's go to the second topic: do Twitter, Facebook, and Google make up a thought police or a dictatorship? The comparison is absolutely exaggerated. In China, there is indeed a thought police, and if the regime doesn't like something you say, then you go to prison. The same happens in Venezuela, and the same happened in countless dictatorships throughout the history of our countries.

The Twitter "thought police", then, has vastly less damaging consequences for the individual than the actual thought police. In one case, freedom is lost and one goes to live behind bars; in the other, access to a platform to share information, opinions or photos of food is simply lost.

The exaggeration in this regard is worrying, to the extent that if any government authority takes these claims seriously, then it may conclude that these companies should be regulated.

Thus, we will end up dealing no longer with the "Terms of Service" of one or several private companies - with whatever arbitrary it may seem - to go on to deal with the Laws and Regulations of the state, something that any person considered liberal will understand that it is much worse.

Can it be wrong for us that an app, or a group of technology companies do everything possible to remove certain speeches from their platforms? Yeah sure. In fact, trying to remove Trump but leave Nicolás Maduro with impunity speaks of the low moral character of those who have made this decision.

On the other hand, it is also objectionable that they follow this path, since the only thing they will achieve is to feed the discourse of persecution that the Trump administration wants to install to gain legitimacy. Now, given the above, it is also true that Big Tech have the right to do what they want with their platforms and it will be the users who will decide whether or not they want to stay on them.

If Twitter users want to stay there despite the blockade on Trump and the double standard, it will be because they consider that - at least for now - the existing alternatives (such as Parler, for example), do not surpass Twitter in terms of costs and benefits . That is, on Twitter you use a platform with which you ideologically disagree but have more arrival.

In Parler, the positive aspect is that there is no exclusion of the Trump players, but it does not have as many users at the moment. Finally the right to do what they want is derived from the right of property. When Senator Ted Cruz asks Jack Dorsey "who the hell chose him" to admit or remove content from his social network, the answer is very simple: he is nothing less than the creator of Twitter, so he is assisted by the property rights over the platform to make decisions, be they good or bad. Point.

Censorship according to Ayn ​​Rand

Finally, he left a few paragraphs from Ayn Rand on this topic. Interestingly, the Russian-American thinker was criticizing the left. It will be necessary to see if this reasoning does not apply now also to those who - from the right - are inflamed against social networks: For years, collectivists have spread the idea that a private individual's refusal to finance an adversary constitutes a violation of the adversary's right to free expression, and an act of "censorship." They claim that the refusal of a newspaper to use or publish articles by writers whose ideas are diametrically opposed to its policy is "censorship".

There is “censorship” if businessmen refuse to publish their ads in a magazine that accuses, insults and defames them. There is "censorship" if a television advertiser objects that reprehensible acts are committed in the program he finances, such as the incident that took place when Alger Hiss was invited to impeach former Vice President Nixon. And there are all those who declare that "there is censorship through ratings, advertisers, television networks, affiliated companies that reject programs offered to their areas."

It is the same people who threaten to revoke the license of any station that does not agree to accept their point of view on programming, and who claim that this is not censorship. Consider the implications of such a trend. The term "censorship" applies only to government action. No private act is censorship. No individual or particular agency can silence a man or suppress a publication: only the government can.

The freedom of expression of private individuals includes the right not to agree with their opponents, not to listen to them and not to finance them. " (the full text is on pages 142 and following of this link)

INFOBAE - This summer is undoubtedly completely different: far from the wave of Argentines visiting Punta del Este and other classic beaches, the neighboring country considers that the season is lost.

The Uruguayan government is analyzing extending the border closure until February because it considers that there are no conditions that allow it to open, due to the spread of the coronavirus this summer, after having applied the restrictions in January.

However, the price of the peso in banks and exchange houses on the other side of the pond always mark a good reference on the local exchange situation. And the fact is that in this summer without Argentines in Uruguay, buying 1 dollar with pesos can cost up to double what it is worth within the country.

It is known that the US banknote is the “tool” preferred by Argentines to safeguard their savings in recent decades, due to the constant depreciation of the peso and inflation that is among the highest in the world. In fact, last year the Government had to tighten the exchange rate more and more to stop, even, the sale of the quota of US $ 200 per month, requesting justification of income to access them and other requirements.

Because of this, several Argentines thought to avoid these restrictions by crossing the "pond" and going with their pesos to Uruguay, where there are practically no local exchange restrictions, to get the desired dollar amount.

The big problem, beyond the health limitations due to the pandemic, is that the cost of buying foreign currency with Argentine pesos can be worth more than double what it costs in Argentina, since you must have to pay up to an equivalent of $ 292, for every dollar, in banks and exchange houses on the other side of the shore.

An amount that exceeds the domestic price of the solidarity dollar (the official plus taxes) that can be bought in a limited way in national banks and that has a price close to $150. Or, it exceeds the implicit value of the US currency that can be acquired on the Stock Exchange, through the purchase and sale of Argentine stocks and bonds that are listed in both pesos and dollars, through MEP and cash operations. with liquidation, whose cost ranges from $145 per green ticket.

To this is added that for several economists, the local reference of $160 is considered "expensive" for the exchange rate. Even in the informal market, where there are no limits on the amount of purchase, the price that must be paid for each blue dollar is around $ 160, the price of the dollar in Uruguay is up to double what it is worth.

In Argentina, the price of the dollar in Uruguay is up to double what it is worth in Argentina.

In Uruguay, it's double

So, the discouragement of traveling from Argentina to Uruguay to buy dollars is great, since their value ranges between $243 and $292 per US bill, depending on the Uruguayan bank or exchange where the transaction is made.

This purchase price is reached thanks to the fact that when arriving in the neighboring country with Argentine pesos, they must first be converted into Uruguayan pesos and then transformed into dollars. The purchase value paid in financial businesses for our currency ranges from 0.15 to 0.18 Uruguayan pesos. Meanwhile, the sale price of the US dollar on the other side of the shore is 43.85 Uruguayans for every US $ 1. In summary, this notorious difference that must be paid in Uruguay to obtain dollars is not directly related to those two currencies, but to the low price of the Argentine peso.

The causes of this are varied, the main one is that "nobody wants Argentine pesos" because of their low value. Although there are also reasons strictly related to the exchange market and the exchange flows of currencies. “With borders closed since December due to the pandemic, today in Uruguay there is practically no market for Argentine currency. The exchange houses do not want to buy Argentine pesos and the price that appears on the screens is more of a 'theoretical value' ”, Lorena Giorgio, principal economist at Econviews, tells iProfessional.

According to her argument, without Argentines going to Uruguay or Uruguayans crossing into Argentina, for Uruguayan exchange houses "it is not business to accumulate stock of Argentine pesos, knowing that every day it is losing a little more value", she complete it. The economist Federico Furiase, director of the Eco Go consultancy, completes this: "In general, there is also a situation of spread of the exchange houses to avoid having a great demand for dollars and loading Argentine pesos."

As for the specifics related to exchange operations, Gustavo Quintana, operator of Pr Cambios, adds iProfesional: “It surely has to do with a problem of crossed exchange rates. It is that I do not believe that in Uruguay they have much market of Argentine pesos to take them against dollars". And he justifies on this high price of the dollar, measured in domestic currency, in the neighboring country: "It is the premium they ask to keep pesos, because they have to compensate for the scarce market there is for our currency there.

They do not have an application for Argentine pesos, and the procedure to bring them here later is complicated and expensive, so they have no interest in doing so”, Quintana sentence.

Argentines who can save and seek to dollarize their bills, see that doing so via Uruguay It is not a good business. Argentines who can save and seek to dollarize their tickets, see that doing so via Uruguay is not a good business.

From the opinion of Natalia Motyl, economist at the Libertad y Progreso Foundation, there is also a historical reason, which has to do with the national situation. "Buying dollars in Uruguay was always more expensive than in the city of Buenos Aires, something typical of the obstacles that exist in the local exchange market," she says. In addition, Motyl maintains that a price that can reach up to $292 per dollar in the neighboring country is due to the result of operations carried out with cash, since thus its cost is much higher than “if it were through the exchange market , which in that case would be similar to the one that is being traded in Argentina ”.

INFOBAE - The suspension of corn exports shows the misconceptions on which policy decisions are based Before the end of 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that it will suspend corn exports until March in order to supply the domestic market. The measure, a clear attack on the freedom to trade, is part of three basic conceptual errors that the president himself made evident when defending it in a recent radio interview.

The first basic mistake is to believe that the suspension of exports will effectively lower the price of corn. To think about this is to take into account only the short term, at which time those who were about to sell corn abroad must sell said product in the domestic market, increasing the supply. Now, what will happen when the producers learn? Well, given the lower profitability received, they will think twice if they want to produce this good. In this context, they may decide to dedicate themselves to the production of other crops not subject to official regulation, or they may directly prefer to use the resources that they were going to use in the production of corn and send them to an account in the United States. The end result, then, is lower corn production.

This reasoning is not just a beautiful theoretical development. This was the result of the meat export ban that Néstor Kirchner promoted in 2006. The stock of cattle fell by 12 million, which finally made meat, even after inflation, more expensive than before of the measure.

The second basic mistake is to believe that the costs of production define the prices of consumer goods. The president explained by radio that, although the demand for food in the world is increasing, "Argentine producers produce in Argentine pesos and for two years they have not had increases in electricity or gas rates and the increase in fuel was very low".

What Fernández is trying to communicate is that beyond the changes in global demand, as the costs of Argentine producers are not only in pesos, but in many cases they are frozen, prices for Argentines should not rise.

The mistake here is to believe that costs determine prices. Let's see, it is clear that if the demand wants to pay for a ton of corn $10 and that price does not cover the cost of any producer, then no one will have any corn. But this does not mean that prices are determined by costs. What happens in the markets is that the demand shows the willingness to pay, and in the face of that willingness, one, twenty, or hundreds or thousands of companies enter to sell with different cost structures. Now if my costs are $10 and I have buyers offering to pay $20, why am I going to sell for less than $20? At best, this gap between price and cost will create an incentive for more producers to enter the market at costs higher than 10 to continue making a profit.

Prices define up to what level of costs to incur to produce something, to believe that it is the other way around (and that it is the prices of inputs that determine the price of the product) is a basic error of economic understanding.

The last mistake is to suggest that the prices of some products offered in Argentina should not be similar to those of the rest of the world. Linked with the previous comment, President Fernández rhetorically asked himself “why do Argentines pay the kilo of barbecue as a Chinese, a French or a German does?… I don't understand why they want to charge the Argentine at the same price that world."

Here it seems that the head of state does not know the concept of a tradable asset. In economics it is said that a good is tradable if it can be traded internationally. An example of a tradable good is a kilo of corn or toilet paper, while a non-tradable good is the hairdressing service, since the hairdresser cannot travel to Miami at 2 in the afternoon and cut the hair again at Buenos Aires at 3:30.

A particularity of tradable goods is precisely that they tend to have a single price in the global market. That is, since they can be imported and exported, a global demand and a global supply appear where the price of the product tends to be one. In this sense, it is absolutely logical that a kilo of meat tends to be sold at the same price in different cities around the world. It is that if one thinks of the producer who has the option of selling at $700 in the local market against the option of selling at $1000 in a foreign market, to the extent that the transaction costs to place the production abroad are lower than $300 (the difference between what you are willing to pay in both markets), it will choose to sell to the one who pays more.

The underlying problem is the low salary. Once it is understood that restricting exports will not lower prices in the long run, that costs do not define prices, and that internationally tradable products tend to have a single price in all countries, we get to the root of the real problem. Is that, if Argentines cannot buy meat or bread, the problem does not lie with the butcher, nor the baker, nor the exporters of these products.

The problem is that the average salary is low in international terms. And that salary is not increased by measures that destroy economic freedom (such as export bans, withholdings, exchange traps or price controls), but by doing exactly the opposite.

Por Enrique Aguilar  Consejero Académico de Libertad y Progreso - Profesor de Teoría Política

EL ECONOMISTA - El reciente episodio protagonizado por la directora del INADI, quien reveló haber hecho beneficencia con dinero ajeno al contratar a gente cercana y presuntamente necesitada porque “para eso está el Estado”, es un testimonio más de la inconexión existente entre la clase gobernante y el común de los mortales argentinos. La política, en efecto, siempre propensa a colonizar el Estado y convertida desde hace tiempo en un ámbito de movilidad social ascendente, se ha mostrado porfiadamente incapaz de dar el paso inicial, revisando sus propias cuentas antes de obligar a la sociedad a incrementar las suyas con más impuestos y restricciones de toda índole.

¿Cómo se explica, por ejemplo, que con nuestros exorbitantes niveles de pobreza tengamos veinte ministerios, con el tendal de dependencias que ello supone? ¿Cuántas oportunidades ofrece este exceso de organismos para la generación de contratos de los que luego algunos hacen usufructo? ¿Cómo se explican las remuneraciones que se perciben en muchos de esos ámbitos que, como señaló la revista “Criterio” en un editorial titulado “¿Cuánto Estado puede sostener el sector productivo?”, “alimentan el deseo cargos públicos en profesionales jóvenes conscientes de lo difícil que les resultaría alcanzar esos ingresos en ámbitos privados”? ¿Qué decir de las exenciones impositivas, los regímenes especiales y demás privilegios enquistados en los poderes del Estado que, por lo pronto, resultan incompatibles con el principio de igualdad “como base del impuesto y de las cargas públicas” consagrado por nuestra Constitución?

El recurso a una mayor presión fiscal, en un país que ha perdido el sentido del límite en este como en tantos otros terrenos, no puede sino consternar todavía más a una clase media que viene siendo esquilmada indisimuladamente por gobiernos tan faltos de voluntad como de imaginación para recortar gastos. Un ejemplo reciente nos sirve de ilustración. Me refiero a la alícuota del 1,2 % en concepto de Impuesto a los Sellos que se aplica desde ahora sobre las compras y débitos por tarjetas de crédito de ciudadanos residentes en CABA. Se trata, como siempre, de la solución más fácil y al alcance de la mano para quienes prefieren no pagar el precio de revocar una regla no escrita de nuestra vida política, a saber: la que estipula que los ajustes siempre deben recaer sobre el sector privado.

Las críticas se han hecho oír prontamente con respecto a este nuevo gravamen al consumo: por el contrasentido que supone su imposición al mismo tiempo que se pretende alentar la recuperación de la actividad económica (“quieren estimular la economía agobiando al que la pone en marcha”, adujo el presidente de la CAME, Gerardo Díaz-Beltrán); porque desalienta la bancarización y aumenta la informalidad, e incluso por sus vicios de legalidad al vulnerar –según se ha advertido también– normativas vigentes que impiden gravar con dicho impuesto instrumentos que no revisten los caracteres exteriores de un título jurídico válido, como ocurre con los resúmenes de tarjeta de crédito que obran meramente como una liquidación de gastos.

Por su parte, el Gobierno de CABA (cuya estructura y plantilla de empleados parecen fuera de toda proporción) defendió el nuevo tributo aludiendo a la necesidad de compensar la pérdida originada en la decisión del gobierno nacional de redirigir un porcentaje de la coparticipación que percibía la ciudad. Asimismo, se respaldó en la necesaria “armonización” con otras jurisdicciones que ya aplican este impuesto, argumento cuando menos absurdo para los que creemos que un buen gobierno debería caracterizarse por “armonizar” para mejor, pero nunca para peor.

Manso rebaño de sus sucesivos pastores, el sector productivo parece indefectiblemente condenado a obedecer y pagar, aceptando un sacrificio nunca compartido por el Estado en sus distintas jurisdicciones. ¿Por qué habría de ocurrir lo contrario? ¿Qué incentivos tiene la dirigencia política para cambiar sus viejas mañas? ¿Acaso cabe pensar que un individuo, habituado a maximizar sus intereses, habría de relegarlos a un segundo plano por el solo hecho de acceder a una función pública? Antes de crear nuevos impuestos, sería más que revelador para la opinión pública conocer con exactitud algunos detalles de un gasto público descomunal que, en un mano a mano con los contribuyentes, ningún funcionario se animaría en su sano juicio a defender y cuya prolija revisión, sea que redunde o no en un ahorro verdaderamente significativo, se impone por sí misma, como gesto no solo político sino primariamente moral.

Decía Benjamin Constant que, “en determinadas épocas, hay que recorrer todo el círculo de las locuras para volver a la razón”. ¿Habremos recorrido los argentinos todo ese círculo? Es un interrogante que nos invade a estas horas.