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The USA calls it “antitrust”, whereas Australians prefer the term “regulation”. It’s about authorities we give the power to make decisions and arrangements to end business corruption, collusion, cartels, monopoly, excessive power, &c.

I know, stop laughing! It never works and it never will.

When they run out of ideas, regulators usually seek to break monopolies up into smaller pieces. But I have a question: Why is it commercial practice at the small business level that when a ‘going concern’ is leased, the net profit is split equally (before income tax, depreciation and amortisation, and after any adjustment for non-recurrent expenditures) as landlord’s rental and tenant’s profit, but this isn’t done for giant monopolies when the nation is the landlord of the used resource?

The Rudd government tried to do something along these lines with the Resource Super Profits Tax on mining companies, but it went awry when the companies, most of them American, spent up big in an advertising campaign to scare the wits out of Australians. And it worked.

If tenants of small businesses were to jack up on paying any rent because they also pay tax, what do you think the landlord would do about the lease? …….. Yup! 👌

Where exactly is the point where you get big enough that you don’t have to comply with normal commercial practice when, like Google or Facebook, you are able to threaten governments that you will remove your ‘service’ if you’re required to do what other businesses have to do?

‘Regulation’ isn’t an answer; it’s part of the problem. If mega-companies are mining the nation’s mineral wealth, or Big Tech is using the electromagnetic spectrum, they owe 50% net profit to their landlord, the national government. Governments have proven delinquent in acting in the national interest, using ‘regulators’ as an excuse to institute nonsense, whilst ignoring common sense solutions to gargantuan monopolies.