We spend much of our lives keeping nature at bay. We work to earn money so we can weatherproof our houses; we shop for soap, ant buttons, silver polish, raincoats, and brooms; and when we're not washing and wiping, we're weeding, mowing, painting, and paving. We go on diets, protect our skin from ultraviolet rays, and take medicines to offset the effects of cat dander and pollen. If it weren't for nature's relentless onslaught we would have much more time to enjoy ourselves.
This is all self-evident. Who can't recognize a scorpion or a hurricane and understand the potential danger they represent? But not all manifestations of nature are as tangible, and as a result they are able to overwhelm us by stealth. Consider two natural tendencies: aggregation and complexity. Often they work hand-in-hand, organizational bureaucracies being an obvious example.
Just as Frost noted there is something that does not love a wall, we have to recognize there is something that does not love simplicity – some force that inevitably entangles every enterprise. This is as true for a making a brick as for creating a universe. There was a time when a brick was a mixture of mud and water shaped by hand and left to dry in the sun. Today there are journals devoted to brick-making, and you can study the processes in universities. There's a factory in Indiana capable of producing 120 million bricks per year, rain or shine. Thoreau urged us to simplify, simplify. Good luck. In a nearby grocery store I counted forty different containers of chicken broth and bullion. Hard-nosed business people made deliberate decisions to create that needless variety, demonstrating that free enterprise capitalism is indeed subject to the natural law of increasing complexity. In some cases capitalists exploit this phenomenon. One reason General Mills and Nabisco manufacture so many different kinds of breakfast cereals is to clog supermarket shelves and prevent newcomers from entering the field. Cereal manufacturers, being practical capitalists, hate competition. They dream of monopoly. Achieving a monopoly by clogging the marketplace or by producing better and cheaper products is difficult and bothersome. An easier method is to follow the natural tendency for aggregation and buy up the competition.
Back in the late 60s I worked for Cooper Industries, in those days a manufacturer of large engines and compressors. When CI's management decided to extend the company’s product line downward it didn't design new mid-sized engines; it made the easier decision to acquire the Waukesha Motor Company, an existing manufacturer of mid-sized engines. CI wasn't the largest company in its product range, nor was Waukesha the largest in its. Yet Justice Department lawyers quashed the deal because they felt the merger of the two corporations would give them an unfair advantage over their competitors. That was forty years ago. Can anyone imagine its happening today when giant corporations routinely merge with other giants? The big question is, should we be imagining it?
There are those who argue that to interfere with what they call the free market -- an abstract trading area ruled by the law of supply and demand -- is to meddle with the natural order of things. These same people disregard the natural order of things every day when they shave, use birth control devices, and fly in airplanes. The more ruthless among them follow their natural bent and apply whatever methods are necessary to subvert the free enterprise system in order to create monopolies and, ultimately, greater aggregations of wealth. They will lie, cheat, and steal. We know that. But should we restrict the activities of the many to control those few? Of course we should. Honest people are no more inhibited by sensible business regulations than are careful drivers by sensible traffic laws. The key word, of course, is "sensible," and the problem is avoiding the law of increasing complexity when creating the regulations. Not an easy thing to do.
The official Little League book of rules and regulations requires 64 pages to define a kid's game that used to be played in vacant lots. How many pages of regulations will it take to control grown men and women playing games on Wall Street? Here's the paradox: to thwart menacing capitalists will require another aggregation of power, this time in the hands of government officials. As individuals we will gain a small advantage. We have a modicum of influence over government as compared to none over private empire builders. Just as we protect ourselves from other natural incursions in our lives, we have no choice but to employ a carefully overseen government in our continuing effort to resist the threatening outcomes of a totally free market.