Five companies control more than 80 percent of Canada’s grocery/food market.

Five companies dominate global high technology. 

Three social media companies have destroyed traditional media and now dominate news and social discourse. Not to mention spreading misinformation.

The United States has the largest military in the world—more than the next 10 countries combined.

The next largest is China, and other countries lean on them for their defence.

What ties these facts together? 

Concentration. 

For decades, we’ve seen more and more wealth and power concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. 

Mergers of banks, manufacturers, retailers, newspapers, even veterinarian offices, all are giving us, the working people, less choice. 

Meanwhile, the shrinking cohort of owners and controllers (rulers) display increasing collaboration among themselves. They increasingly use the same language, and repeat the same tropes, myths and disinformation.

Concentration is great if you’re an emperor: concentrate all the power in your own hands, denigrate and demonize anyone who disagrees with you, and soon, you’re living better than a Caesar. 

And it’s great if you’re one of the winning top capitalists. Worldwide, the tiny group of the richest people have  hoarded a greater share of wealth. According to the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, the richest one percent (1%) of adults owned 40 percent of global wealth; the richest 10 percent owned 85% of the world total. 

Why is this a problem?

Because concentration of wealth in fewer hands means more people with little to no wealth.

Now wait a minute, Scott, you’re saying. You’re always asking for evidence for sweeping claims.

Some statistics, i.e. evidence

Increasing household debt in the West has risen to what were once shocking levels—latest figures put average household debt in Canada at over 175 percent of disposable income. 

While executive pay has risen to record levels, adjusted for inflation, worker pay has consistently fallen compared to inflation for the past three decades. And minimum wage stagnated through the 90s, 2000s and 2010s, until progressive governments pushed through an increase. An increase opposed by businesses and their toadies in conservative parties.

Minimum wages in Canadian provinces ranges from $15.00 per hour in Saskatechewan and Alberta (the provinces with the most conservative governments) to $19.00 in Nunavut (the territory with the highest cost of living). In the U.S., the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour—the same rate since 2009. So no increase in pay for 16 years, while costs of food, housing and all the necessities. Twenty states have a minimum wage less than or equal to $7.25 per hour.

Homelessness has increased in Canada and the U.S. Countries with more real estate than any others cannot ensure that every citizen has a safe place to live.

One in seven people in the U.S. require food banks or other assistance not to starve. And one in four Canadians cannot afford to buy food and have to turn to food banks. In Canada!

Tuberculosis rates are spiking. Tuberculosis is a symptom of poverty. In the richest countries in history.

Concentration of ownership

One driver of concentration of wealth is concentration of ownership, also called “corporate concentration.” (Another is tax manipulation, but that’s a topic for another blog post.) We don’t have to look far to see corporate concentration it. Mergers and acquisitions of grocery chains. In Canada, think of Sobey’s acquiring Farm Boy, or the Weston Group’s ownership of multiple supermarket chains, including Loblaws, Maxi, No Frills, Provigo, Dominion—the list goes on.

Five corporations, Weston, Wal-Mart, Metro, Empire (Sobey’s and subsidiaries) and Costco account for 80 percent of food sold in Canada.

In Canada, three companies control almost all wireless or mobile telecommunications services: Bell, Rogers and Telus. Rogers “merged”—that is, bought out—Shaw Communications in 2021. Because it had to navigate regulations, the Canadian Law Awards named the transaction the “M&A Deal of the Year.” The Law Awards? M&As? 

Concentration is not as blatant in the U.S., as there are more companies sharing a much larger economy. Still, information services, transportation and warehousing, and utilities are the most concentrated, approaching 30 percent of the market for the largest players. 

A glaring example is Ticketmaster: through mergers and acquisitions, it has seized over 62 percent of all entertainment ticket sales in the US. Anyone who’s thought about seeing one of the leading entertainment acts lately knows how ticket prices have spiked.

But there are worse cases: according to Investopedia, three companies, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T, have 99.1% of the U.S. wireless telephone market. Five conglomerates control film and television production. Four airlines move two-thirds of all air passengers. 

And it’s getting worse. 

Why this is a problem

First, concentration means less competition. Which as we all know, leads to less choice and higher prices.

Look at air travel: not only have prices risen sharply over the past few years, now all the airlines charge extra for baggage and carry-on items. Those used to be included in the price. But the advertised price does not include that.

In addition, it turns out food retailers have been systematically cheating their customers, by overstating the weight of meat in their containers, for example. The retailers admitted to colluding to fix the price of bread only three years ago. 

It’s worst when it comes to social media. The top three social media companies have systematically destroyed traditional media companies. (To be fair, newspapers made every mistake imaginable to make themselves irrelevant.) The problem? Misinformation spreads unabated, unquestioned. Con artists sell harmful products as healthy. Politicians scream lies continuously.

Control of the biggest social media companies, Meta and “X,” are in the hands of one man each. And their interest are clearly not those of their users’.

People believe them, to the point where many people throw up their hands and disbelieve everything. Then use harmful lotions instead of sunscreen, sunburn their perineums, or eat poisonous potions to “detox” their bodies. As a society, we have learned nothing from the snake-oil scammers of the late 1800s. 

Military concentration

Let’s bring this full circle. Russia’s illegal, evil invasion of Ukraine (starting in 2014, intensified in 2022) lays bare the concentration of military power in a few countries. NATO could easily defeat Russia and force it to withdraw from other sovereign countries, if its leaders wanted to. A NATO that includes the U.S., that is. 

Without the U.S., Europe is not able, at the moment, to force Russia to do anything. Since the fall of the USSR in 1991, most NATO members have let their military spending slide, prioritizing other issues. And with good reason.

In other words, they increasingly relied on the U.S.’ military might for their own defence. Today, though, the President-Elect is threatening to withhold military support for other NATO members. (That would violate the terms of membership, but again, that’s a topic for another debate). Which leaves other nations from Canada to Poland and beyond facing a stark threat.

All in the hands of one

And now we get to the problem of concentration.

Of wealth, information and power.

It’s the same people who control all three. A handful of companies, a few people, control the flow of information, wealth and military power.

Three in particular: Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Each has unquestionable power. They have shown themselves ready to use it as they see fit. Each has done so.

And their interests are not ours. What is good for them is usually bad for everyone else.

What does this mean? It means that they will exercise their power for their own benefit, and for the benefit of people like them.

And that’s bad for all of us.

Example: Trump has spoken about taking control of the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada. How that would benefit the people of those three places is … well, let’s face it. It would be catastrophic.

No thank you, USA. We don’t need to lose health care while simultaneously dealing with daily mass shootings.

And there is little we can do about it—unless we recognize our plight and take concerted, unified action. 

What we all should do

I don’t like to tell other people what to do. But I see real harm looming. So I ask all of you to take off the blinders, and look at what’s really happening. 

Don’t take your news from social media, or any single source. Exercise your own abilities of critical thinking. And ask, as my friend Lyobmy Luciuk says, “Cui bono?”
Who benefits from what’s happening?

It’s not you or me.