Not enough, but better than nothing

The Economic Concentration Committee, headed by Eyal Gabbai and Haim Shani, is moving in the right direction. It has ratified a notion that until recently interested only a tiny segment of the public – that a small elite cannot continue to use their money to control the majority. There is no need for the owner of a bank to control industrial enterprises as well. The committee has decided that it's either or – either Bank Mizrahi or Coca Cola, either an insurance company or a cement factory. The committee did not cover as much ground as it needed to, but it did make significant strides. More power to it.

The committee has also made life a bit harder for business pyramids, but stopped short of dismantling them. Again, not enough, but not peanuts, either.

Monday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior economists were praising the committee's recommendations, I happened to find myself in Tel Aviv's Neve Sharett neighborhood. At the neighborhood pharmacy, I bought two pairs of glasses for the price of one and 11 Popsicles for 10 agurot (less than 3 cents). It was a lesson in the profit margins of the monopolies and cartels.

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The committee's recommendations follow the revolution in the cellular telephone market led by Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon, as well as the committee set up by Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and led by Professor Eitan Sheshinski, which upped the state's take from national energy resources.

Now it remains to be seen what Professor Manuel Trajtenberg's committee, which will also propose steps for dealing with monopolies and cartels in the ports and in the electricity and dairy sectors, will propose, and the overall positive picture will become clear.

However, the committee's recommendations can be likened to throwing a life preserver to a man struggling in stormy waters (an image borrowed from Natan Alterman). Salvation is still not guaranteed. Not a port, not a safe harbor, not a stable deck.

Now, government ministers and MKs are likely to come under massive pressure from the tycoons, who hold a significant amount of the pension funds which form the basis of the general public's economic security. They will exploit the hearing provided to them and lobby the Knesset to soften and dull the recommendations, and will certainly keep them from being expanded.

The struggle is far from over, and could deteriorate if those struggling put down their public and verbal weapons feeling that they have left a better world behind them. The social protesters as well, who displayed limited interest in the struggle against the pyramids, monopolies and cartels, know that this forms part of their demands, although they are not experts in the field.

This is a considerable part of the “social justice” that they demand.

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