My principal recollection of high school, and indeed university economics, is how price is determined by the market when competition prevails. But in its absence, price is determined by the monopolists.

The other conclusion, I recall, is that the last thing oligopolists will compete on is price. They prefer such things as advertising.

FORCE

The job of the politicians is, therefore, to force monopolists to go against their nature, as the Americans did so well, over a century ago, in the celebrated Sherman and Clayton Acts.

But in Australia, politicians typically go soft on monopolists.

Especially, these days, where monopolists play politics and campaign for far-Left, even neo-communist, policies.

Was anyone surprised when potential competition against Qantas was blocked by the government just as Qantas was vigorously campaigning for the Yes vote in the government’s referendum?

Years before, politicians handed over the insurance industry holus-bolus to the monopolists by getting rid of two restraints.

First, the usual carpetbaggers were allowed to sell off the mutual companies owned by the policy-holders such as the NRMA.

Then they sold off the GIO and other taxpayer-owned insurance companies.

Today the highly political supermarkets are left free to gouge both farmers and customers to a level not tolerated in comparable countries.

Of course, there’ll be the cosmetics of inquiry after inquiry, but none will result in any effective legislation being rushed through the Senate before the election.

I will have more to say on this at a later date.

BOTTOMLESS BIKINIS

WHILE absorbing news about the King’s illness, the mental impairment of the US President and the NSW police producing a defence for violent anti-semites so weak even a desperate defence lawyer would never use it, bottomless bikinis, also known as G-strings, are making summer tabloid headlines.

This is not about the grotesque mankini, but about an emerging practice limited to the “fair sex” where increasingly, bare buttocks are exposed.

EYEBROW

As with so many things, there is a time and a place. Worn on public transport, supermarkets or restaurants, a bottomless bikini will raise at least an eyebrow.

But kept to the beach, one interesting trend has not been so far mentioned.

This is the descent, if I may put it that way, from the formerly topless fashion to the current bottomless style.

This has much to do with the West’s current female body ideal, vastly different from Renaissance Europe and, although women must hide their bodies there, the Muslim world.

Today’s Western ideal of the slimmer, almost boyish look with tightly rounded breasts is sometimes said to be related to an assumption that the great designers of women’s clothes are often gay.

Whether or not that’s true, it seems clear that young ladies have come to the conclusion that while their breasts are not as disciplined as the ubiquitous Australian cartoonist, Brodie Mac, so long depicted them, their bottoms are.

As to Brodie Mack, I found a cartoon of a typical long-legged, firm-breasted Brodie girl sitting with her bookish admirer in a romantic setting.

She slaps his face while the following limerick explains the reason:

There was a young lady of Beecher

Used to roam with a nice schoolhouse teacher

But he asked one night late

“Do you conjugate?”

She cried, “nevermore will I meetcher!”

By way of contrast to today’s young ladies, the trend over recent decades has been for many young men to cover up their no doubt well-shaped thighs with shapeless long boardshorts. However useful they are on boards, they do make swimming in the surf more difficult.

Why has this curious latter-day puritanism struck young men while young women are so liberated?

Always on the lookout for a conspiracy, I wonder whether this is an unintended consequence of the never-ending campaign by a cranky and no-doubt jealous commentariat condemning Tony Abbott for wearing speedos, notwithstanding that this is a normal and indeed prudent uniform for lifesavers.

My wise mother used an apt saying on such occasions, probably from one of the old countries from which she came or was intimately related:

“When you want to hit someone you can always find a stick.”