Government Intervention in the Marketplace.

        A consumer is anyone who is involved in paying for services supplied publicly or privately by a person or business. The government has tried many things to protect the consumer by passing acts of congress to regulating whole industries. The government has created comities like the Board of Health and Federal Consumer Information Agency to solely protect and supply the consumer with information in the business world this is a form of intervention and should be kept and is a strong point of our governments’ economic involvement. If the marketplace were to go unchecked in our country the common consumer would be taken advantage of and sold faulty products or be over-charged or any number of other ways producers could take advantage of helpless consumers. The governments place in the market place is to protect the consumer by not letting monopolies, cartels, or oligopolies or any other type of illegal action which uses the consumer to his disadvantage.

        In the United States current system of government intervention in the market place they tend to stay away form areas that were competition is good and thriving. Although sometimes the government will try to regulate an area of the market place which is either more beneficial to the consumer or more productive and efficient if it was just left alone and watched. Small businesses will sometimes be affected by the actions governments take to regulate business and that should not happen in a perfect world. Although this does not happen often if government just looked out for the consumers well being then business would have to follow suit or suffer the consequences. The government can be to regulating at times making it hard for new businesses to start up and this is a bad part of government intervention in the market place.

        Utilities are something useful to the public. Services such as electric power, gas, water, telephone, all of these are things used daily by consumers and are basically considered necessities. Since the demand for these goods and services is usually constant, then if not regulated by the government prices could be raised to outrageous prices and the good or service provided only in certain area and with limited quality. The government regulates some of these utilities very well but other goods and services could be added such as air travel and cell phone reception and cell phones in general. The government does a good job regulating some utilities and that is a good type of intervention but the government needs to start taking more utilities under their wing as times change.