Irish Examiner view: Global markets are failing our citizens

Supply side crisis

Another market where competition was supposed to be good, and protect the citizen, was power and energy

It was a Scot, Adam Smith, who invented the concept of the “invisible hand”, the idea that markets self-regulate in the interests of the consumer through being left unimpeded to balance the conflicting requirements of supply and demand.

This idea that equilibrium is achieved through freedom of consumption and production unhindered by governments has been in the ether for nearly 250 years.