The most important achievement of the cottage cheese revolution is that the comatose consumer public has at last been roused from its torpor. Consumers are finally taking action against the capitalists, producers, kibbutzim and moshavim, manufacturing councils, importers and distributors, trade unions, retail chains and others who shamelessly conspire to exploit them. The recent widespread protests against the high price of consumer goods show that when they abandon their usual apathy, the public can accomplish things. The problem, of course, isn't merely the price of cottage cheese or any other consumer product. The problem runs deeper and broader than that, encompassing our entire lives. Israeli oligarchs and their partners conspire against the Israeli consumer and take a monopoly tax, or economic rent, for every product and service consumed. All this is done with the blessing of successive Israeli governments. And it's not only consumer goods that are affected, but also the price of water, electricity, education, credit, apartments, cars, electronic goods, you name it. This wholesale theft is the reason hundreds of thousands of families in Israel can't make it to the end of the month, while millions of Israelis live in poverty and most people find life difficult and bitter. Who is to blame for this shameful state of affairs? The politicians, first of all, who uphold an economic structure distorted by monopolies and obstacles to competition. Lack of competition reduces efficiency and productivity. Low productivity leads to low salaries, which in conjunction with high prices makes the average Israeli worker poor. The politicians elected with our votes serve the interests of others: the oligarchs, the monopolistic unions, the retailers, as well as any other power broker able to fund or recruit voters for primaries. Politicians subvert reform efforts at the will of lobbyists and special interest groups, harming consumers with almost every law passed in the Knesset. If the voting public does nothing, politicians will merely continue to serve the interests of whoever pressures and rewards them. Even those government watchdogs who are supposed to be looking out for us -- the regulators -- in fact betray us. Regulators have a lot of power, as well as taxpayer-funded salaries and budgets that are not negligible. But they do little to stop the banks' milking of the public through fees or mortgages. Nor do regulators ensure that publicly appointed directors to the boards of large companies do their jobs. As a result, Israeli oligarchs have abused their political power and borrowed most of the public's savings, hundreds of billions worth, to advance their own business affairs. Regulators let the oligarchs do as they see fit with the public's money, ignoring the fundamental financial axiom of spreading the risk, especially when it comes to other people's pensions. Instead, regulators -- who tend to be academics used to climbing the academic ladder by arguing over minutiae -- devote most of their energy to battles over ego, authority, and turf, inflating their self-esteem by chronically playing the devil's advocate and blocking every attempt to actually do something to benefit the public. The result is clear: regulation, which costs the economy millions as a result of red tape, has almost never provided the protections it is supposed to. It has failed to prevent a single serious crisis and is largely a waste of time, effort and money. Among the illusions burst by the cottage cheese crisis is the belief that kibbutzim and moshavim still preserve an ember of social decency, as well as the idea that women's entry into the loftiest heights of the business world make that world more decent and socially conscious. It turns out that agriculture lobbyists and lobbyists for manufacturing councils like the dairy council are just what their profession suggests: political wheeler-dealers. Members of kibbutzim and moshavim take advantage of the good name the kibbutz and moshav movement had in the past to milk the public, particularly low-income groups. As far as women in business are concerned, it turns out that Zehavit Cohen and Ofra Strauss are no different from any male businessman seeking to maximize profits. It's good that the public is casting aside its delusions. Perhaps it will wake up and stand up for its rights, demanding that politicians enact real reforms to change our economic structure and render it as efficient and fair as it ought to be.
