APRS NEWS
September 1998
ACCEPTABLE LIMITS OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
The late, great Adam Smith an early pundit of marketing economics [1723-1790] once wrote "People of the same trade rarely come together, even for merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices".
It is against the background of this kind of thinking that the Office of Fair Trading keeps a beady eye on professional bodies, trade associations and self-regulatory organisations. It concedes that there are many ways in which organising or regulating an industry or trade can be beneficial to the consumer, but: 'competition good! collusion bad!'.
The APRS believes it is important to keep abreast of OFT policy as it evolves under successive political pressures, and sent Mark Broad along, with representatives of trade organisations in a very wide range of sectors, to a CBI conference on just this topic, one half-day in July.
Information gleaned will enable us to steer a careful course in the future wherever 'collective' action by members might be mooted.
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