Businessmen are not saints.
They do everything to kill competition, everything. Otherwise competition kills their business.
The most effective tactic is to use force. And force is used wherever possible even today.
The European trading companies which colonised Asia, Africa, and America; were permitted by law to have “armies” to fight out rivals, locals, and pirates.
But with democracy flowering in twentieth century and colonies gaining independence, outright “invasion” of the business rivals became impossible.
Soon, the Leftist thugs came on the scene in democracies. They theorised that to ensure a just society, governments must regulate businesses.
And mayhem began all over again. In the capitals of the countries. Businessmen started paying politicians to have the regulations to finish the rivals. America has even legalised the lobbying by businesses. Result is that in America, the lawmakers do not write laws, they do not even read them, lobbyists write them, and the politicians just sign them. Politicians have become hooked to the loot, and therefore are not ready to let the regulations be dismantled.
Trump was freeing businesses in the US, and so he has been overthrown. Openly, in broad day light.
In India, scene is exactly the same. Except that even the lobbying is illegal, so you need to pay bribes even to lobby. That is, one more layer to penetrate. Therefore businessmen spend a fortune to buy politicians in Delhi.
In the interiors of India, in most of the industrial clusters and ports, thugs use open violence to control supply of labour, trucks and raw materials like soil for earthfills, sand, and stone aggregates for concrete. In fact, barring the few glittering tycoons like Ambani, in India in most cases the businessman, the politician, and the goon are combined in one and the same person. A businessman in India needs musclemen just as much as he needs MBAs, may be even more.
That is why politicians become so rich so quick in India. Businessmen have to share their profits with them, otherwise the next session of parliament sees a new three lettered monster: Some new NGT, some XYZ or ZYX. And that is why politicians in India can do anything and everything to capture and retain power: make any compromises, grant any concessions to their vote banks.
Almost all the regulations are unnecessary, frauds, stratagems for loot. There are IS codes prescribing norms for every conceivable human activity (except the activity of conceiving itself, to the best of my knowledge.),
All that the government needs to do is to punish violation of IS codes. But it doesn’t punish even violation of IPC. And for the same reason: it is too busy regulating businesses to do its core function: to enforce contracts and punish violations of laws.
A new wave of worldwide revolutions is required to overthrow the regulatory state.
