Brainwashing through Repetitive Chanting.
It is a well know by psychologists that “Repetitive Chanting” is an effective Brainwashing technique.
If you repeat something over and over again, despite the statement defying common logic, in a persons mind it can turn in fact.
This technique well practiced in North Korea to brainwash the population into believing that Chairman Kim is the greatest leader in the world. Each day the entire population is required to engage in repetitive chanting to praise the great Chairman Kim, while they are forced to eat the bark off the trees.
The same technique is used by large corporations in attempt to brainwash the Australian population into believing that when two corporations dominating a market, that there is “vigorous competition” and they both operate in a “highly competitive market”, despite these statements defying common logic.
These are the chants used by large corporations throughout Australia whenever two companies dominant the market. The theory is that if they can repeat these chants enough, it will be accepted as fact.
Read any submission from the likely suspects of The Business Council of Australia, Woolworths or the Shopping Center Council – in any industry sector where just a few corporations dominate the phrases “we operate in a highly competitive market” or “there is vigorous competition between all” are repeated over and over and over again. Woolworths are the worst offender there is hardly a Woolworths media release without these words.
The hope is that the population will be brainwashed into accepting this ludicrous proposition.
In every industry where these statements are made, all evidence is that there is a complete lack of competition.
But, unfortunately this brainwashing seems to be succeeding - as even governments and the ACCC have been fooled in believing concentrate markets are highly competitive.
When just a few firms dominate the market there is simply less competition and this is, and always has been against the interests of consumers – but this logic has been lost in Australia in 2006.
Our politicians and competitions regulators would do well to study the warning that the father of free market capitalism, Adams Smith’s gave about concentrated markets back in 1776;
To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of [big business]. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but and can serve only to enable [big business], by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776