Wednesday was a dark day for Israel's tycoons. It may not be their darkest day, since still worse awaits them and us on the stock market display screens. Our stock market did not fall due to events in the Israeli economy, although these too will leave their mark. Wall Street and markets in Europe and the Far East brought down Ahad Ha'am Street in Tel Aviv, where the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is located, and which happens to be adjacent to Rothschild Boulevard. When the tsunami from abroad hit us, it turned out that the early warning alarms heard in Israel had been on-target. Once again, it is the citizen who will pay the price. First of all, competition, which works in the citizens' favor, is sorely lacking in the Israeli economy. For instance, while housing costs skyrocket, cement is controlled by a monopoly, which keeps prices artificially high. The same is true for many other products. True, there have been some beneficial reforms. The committee set up by Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and headed by Professor Eytan Sheshinski increased the state's share of future gas revenues. Minister Moshe Kahlon forced cellular phone companies to return huge sums of money to citizens' pockets. One particular oligarch's quarterly profits from a cell phone company plunged to 205 million shekels on Wednesday, which does benefit the consumer, but not exactly. Now that his profits have shrunk the oligarch in question plans to ask for debt relief on a loan he took from the public's pension funds. The consumer always ends up being the fall guy, one way or another. The bed is too short and the blanket too narrow. Some politicians and journalists persistently sounded the warning, even if they didn't put their words into action like Steinitz and Kahlon. These include Knesset members Dr. Einat Wilf, Shelly Yachimovich, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, as well as Eliad Shraga from the Movement for Quality Government, which is holding an in-depth symposium on the issue on Thursday. The Marker and Israel Hayom also sounded a warning, but only partially. Wednesday's blow came so fast and the tycoons fell so hard that it is only a slight exaggeration to say that the day may soon come when the economic concentration committee will no longer be relevant. Tycoons may no longer be an issue. Economists and market observers will find explanations and look for solutions. Israel must wisely walk the middle road between liberalism and social democratic principles, between free market competition and the need to regulate and restrain piggish excesses. Beyond this, we must ask the question Shaul Tchernichovsky raised in his poem "They Say There Is a Land." Where did we go wrong? Why haven't we reached the sun-drenched land of our dreams? Something is rotten in the state of Israel. This is the mindset that places billionaires at the top of the social hierarchy and idolizes wealth in vapid gossip columns. Material wealth has been sanctified above wisdom, science, education and study, and every Jewish mother prefers to have her son become a tycoon rather than her daughter a doctor. This rotteness has led many members of the public to be indulgent toward those they saw as role models. On Tisha B'Av I heard from a prominent Torah scholar. She had seen me say on television that our national home was destroyed in the year 70 due to sin'at hinam, or baseless hatred. You might like to know, she told me, that according to the Jerusalem Talmud the explanation is a bit more complex. Our home was destroyed due to love of material wealth in addition to baseless hatred. Food for thought.