{"id":73,"date":"2012-08-02T19:08:53","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T19:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/?p=73"},"modified":"2012-08-02T19:10:04","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T19:10:04","slug":"the-profits-of-oppression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/news\/the-profits-of-oppression","title":{"rendered":"The Profits of Oppression"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_74\" style=\"width: 541px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/files\/2012\/08\/Luke-Johnson.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-74\" class=\" wp-image-74 \" title=\"Luke Johnson\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/files\/2012\/08\/Luke-Johnson.jpg\" alt=\"Luke Johnson\" width=\"531\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/files\/2012\/08\/Luke-Johnson.jpg 590w, https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/files\/2012\/08\/Luke-Johnson-300x177.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 531px) 100vw, 531px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-74\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Luke Johnson<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A greater threat to open markets than bureaucrats, union bosses or socialists are business owners who exploit regulations to prey on entrepreneurs, argues well-known commentator Luke Johnson of the UK private equity firm Risk Capital Partners.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>He writes: \u201cPoliticians, civil servants and their co-conspirators \u2013 lawyers \u2013 justify their existence by endlessly passing new legislation that restricts free trade.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are aided in this task by parasites who subcontract to government, exploiting monopolies, grabbing licences and restricting new rivals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is always some spurious rationale for fresh edicts \u2013 harmonization, protecting consumers, preventing abuses, and so forth. The effect of such interventions is often stifled competition and unintended consequences that damage the public.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are more than 650 regulatory bodies in Britain, each making the entrepreneur\u2019s life just a little harder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRegulations tend to help big companies. They act as barriers to small newcomers. Be it broadcasting, pharmaceuticals, banking or insurance, my experience has been that the rules favour incumbents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEstablished businesses have permissions and licences that newcomers struggle to obtain, they have connections to regulators, and they also capture the very watchdogs that are meant to oversee them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis big-business establishment resists innovations because they might undermine their oligopoly, margins or special privileges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>CopyRight \u2013 OnTarget 2012 by Martin Spring<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A greater threat to open markets than bureaucrats, union bosses or socialists are business owners who exploit regulations to prey on entrepreneurs, argues well-known commentator Luke Johnson of the UK private equity firm Risk Capital Partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[56,9,1],"tags":[197,57,58,54],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrepreneurs","category-featured","category-news","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-luke-johnson","tag-private-equity","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}