Their distorting and inequitable effects are well known and their long-term existence is an admission of policy failure. It was intended that these controls be removed expeditiously and that they should be structured and administered to achieve that end. A regime where all the major wholesale prices are controlled as well as 75 per cent of the retail prices seems to denote a certain timidity and an associated unwillingness to allow market forces to operate at any level. Having said this, we commend the draft recommendations of the Commission to remove at least part of one belt. In turn this rests on the presumed persistence of some natural monopoly characteristics.
Natural monopolies are hard to find and there is a respectable argument that none exist.
In this case, the liberalisation of the market, technological advances and normal entrepreneurial activity by large and small competitors has, in a few years, substantially narrowed what was once thought to be unassailable market dominance by the incumbent. Competitors have entered the higher return areas first. This process continues. The only real and enduring monopolies are those conferred by governments. These have a long and dishonourable tradition from the salt monopolies granted by medieval monarchs to the industrial monopolies enjoyed by government-owned enterprises in coal and transport in the 20th century.