Illuminated Insight on Competition

I read this free snippet--and found it breathtaking--from Edward Conard's book Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy is Wrong:

"Competition simply evolves and grows more intense over time."

Competition naturally affects how firms interact within the market to compete for market shares.  It forces them to bear larger amounts of risk--risk of failing if they don't innovate and change--and in turn this forces them to shift any risk they can away from themselves onto others: employees.  Like the development of the 401(K) plan.  Like Conard says, we can blame the corporations, but that's useless.

We have to blame competition.  It creates more risk.

And who likes to play with a lot of risk?

A super cool chart from the book:

Our productivity levels per worker have been much higher than any of our Western European counterparts because of our unprecedented improvements and developments in Information Technologies and the internet.  Why?  I'll have to keep reading, but so far, it's riveting.

This book is amazing, and it's an economics gold-mine.  If you like economics, you better get this book.  I'm getting it, shortly after I read a lot more about public health and a few other books on my list this summer.