After several decades the Treasury finally noticed that lack of competition not only costs Israeli consumers hundreds of million, probably billions, in “monopoly rents”, but is also a major reason for economic stagnation.

In his “Estimates of The Damage Caused by Lack of Competition in Several Major Sectors,” treasury economist Dr. Eldad Shidlovsky has documented, chapter and verse, the grave damage caused by lack of competition in the ports, electricity, fuel, banking, local telephony and in milk. His study “revealed” large cost differences between Israel and abroad, and a gross lack of efficiency resulting in low return on capital and large income gaps between workers employed in non-competitive enterprises and others.

The stock market voted its confidence in Benjamin Netanyahu’s appointment as Minister of Finance with a considerable rise. More surprisingly, most economic movers and shakers and many media pundits echoed this confidence, a crowd not usually friendly to Netanyahu (before every election our so called “Captains of the Economy” gather to raise funds for Labor).

Everyone praised Netanyahu’s abilities, and even the fact that he has a very definite economic philosophy, a belief in free markets that usually sends shivers through their spines, since so many of them profit from the Israeli monopolies that are anathema to free markets.

The just-inaugurated Lauder School of Government’s conference on Assessing Israel’s National Strength comes at a propitious moment. Israel faces grave problems, and both its internal and external policies seem confused and wavering. It is therefore vital for key government, defense, industry and public figures to reconsider such basic issues as the components of national strength, the strategic environment, and what the peace process has achieved.

In 1977, after being deposed from a half century in power, Labour politicians and intellectuals bitterly accused a public of being “riffraff” and black-hats of stealing “their” country. An old guard socialist leader suggested the voting public must be replaced with a better one. Since then it has become customary for our politicians and media to blame “the public” for everything, even when it just reacts to misguided and inept leadership.

If we have an extremely autocratic and secretive government, constantly making backroom deals at the public’s expense, it is because the public is not democratic enough. If the shekel falls, “the public” is guilty of a run on the dollar, even when few were permitted to buy it, and banks and large enterprises made massive purchases. When stock markets collapse, the public is blamed for panicking, although banks urged them to buy their stock funds at speculative highs, and markets are routinely manipulated.