The weakness of the crowd: part 1

The economic hollowing out of our services-based economy that defines the American economy of the 20 century is somewhat analogous to the extractive practices that drive the economies of countries that rely heavily on mining and other extractive practices. 

In this case the resource that is being mined is the relative wealth that our nation affords even an average worker. With a median household income that is greater than most developed nations in the world, we can afford discretionary spending at a level that most countries can only dream of. This means that so-called luxuries like cable TV, high speed Internet service, and vast levels of public services at the local state and national level have come to be considered near necessities for most households. This provides a juicy target for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of entities, which are in a position to make pricing and thereby extract incrementally more and more from every household. 

With so many entities reaching into their pockets, no single individual has any chance of taking on even one of the large entities that is doing it. This is partly a problem of isolating a target to go after. And then developing a coordinated assault on that target to try to drive prices down. There are so many targets to go after and so many households to coordinate, how does one possibly begin?

This is somewhat analogous to those wildlife documentaries where the shark tries to attack a school of fish but can't single out a target to go after, so he goes away hungry. 

Companies, municipalities and other entities have come to understand this. They have come to understand that they needn't rise pricing exorbitantly. They just need to keep raising their pricing and coordinating their lobbying efforts to ensure that policy continues to move favorably in their direction.

If they all do it together it leaves the hapless individual consumer with little recourse to fight them. As a result individuals are reduced to price takers and end up being nicked away at by large entities. 

These same entities also are organizing themselves to back political policy and legislation which works in their favor. Again any single individual has very little power to fight against these coordinated assaults. And that assumes that individuals are even aware that these assaults are taking place, which in most cases they are not. So the same entities are in effect creating the rules that enable their ability to continue to hollow out the middle of our economy. 

Take for instance taxation. The prevailing political sentiment is that by lowering taxes we create the possibility for new jobs because business owners will have more money to invest in their businesses which will lead to creation of new jobs. 

Meanwhile state local and federal government have less tax revenue to deploy on public works and infrastructure projects which are the very things that lead to new jobs as well as improved public infrastructure, both of which benefit society as a whole. 

These types of investments are not done ultimately to increase any single entity's profitability. They benefit society as a whole.

Businesses, on the other hand, do not operate this way and therefore the monies that they do attract only serve to improve their own profitability, often at the expense of society as a whole. Cumulatively this has been done at a great cost and detriment to our public infrastructure as a whole over the last few decades. 

How many of us were aware of or involved in the discussions around setting pension levels for public employees in our communities, as they were taking place? 

How many of us were given the opportunity to have a say voice our opinion or vote in favor of other similar decisions which over time are coming to have a catastrophic effect on our communities?

How many people actually understand what "Net Neutrality" means, or have an opinion about whether or not the federal government should support it? For those few folks who do,what chance could they possibly have in swaying federal opinion, when they are up against millions of dollars spent by large Internet, telecomm and cable companies funding professional lobbyists?  

In all these cases there have been thousands of small, incremental decisions that move in favor of these entities that seek only profit maximization. No one of them could be viewed as significant on its own for the most part. But collectively their effect has been cumulative and devastating for the average individual.

What can be done?