I would like, so as not to be deliberately misconstrued, state a satirical defence for market centralisation.

What is the purpose of small business? Why should we have to worry about keeping small business afloat? Surely it would be easier to keep tabs on a couple of big businesses with public listings and open accounts for tax purposes in which dwell content salary and wage earners, living happily ever after on their way to collect their super to pay off their mortgage? Surely society would be better disciplined when the ever present threat of a master controls your progress so focuses your efforts; when good behaviour’s quid pro quo is the benevolence of a higher order on a higher floor? Then we would have a mechanism to keep control and keep ambition limited to that as determined by an organisation, as opposed to the individual. There are so many benefits from centralisation of effort and wealth; from the transparency of the individual’s income for tax purposes to drug tests for employees of large organisation thereby assisting the nation in reducing the health consequences of abuse.

All that unnecessary paperwork and misguided accountants could be mainstreamed into effective economies of scale to make us internationally competitive in our favoured industries, as determined by a free and open international market. People are actually happier when they work via an operations manual and they have a clear path and performance criteria mapped out for them. It requires, of course, a manifestation of achievement. This will be identified by cars, houses and schools to help the stratification of the classes to remain apparent and assist with the individual's reaffirmation of self worth. This determinant allows the individual to reflect on a token of achievement, without having the confusion of the economy having to entertain the tangled web of a wider more dispersed market of multiple players.

Without small business we would have a fairer world because we do not have the unjust intergenerational transfer of wealth via the ability to inherit an income earning entity. You cannot leave your job on floor 27 to your daughter on floor 5, she has to earn it and that is fair.

For those who feel the yearning to row their own boat this can be accommodated via the quasi independence of sub-contracting or franchises. Strict stipulations will avoid these potential non-compliants from wandering too far. To discourage this a penalty will be placed on the commercial space by a tenfold premium on small business to that paid by big business and strict “quality control” issues will be spelt out on how, where and when they operate. If at all possible small business should be festooned with red tape and told that it is only there to protect society from the unscrupulous.

Government assistance is essential to keep the unordered and disorganised proliferation of individual small business independence at bay. Government must support the restriction of competition by everything from local government zoning laws to workplace health and safety regulations. Additionally, Government must not restrict big business from weeding their own garden. Government must allow the manipulation of the market by predatory pricing and unconscionable conduct to control new competition. If ever asked, then Government should say that if it is natural that sharks swim in the ocean then surely they should be allowed to swim inside the nets. We should not interfere in others’ capacity to live with sharks and over time there will be bred children, by natural selection, who are immune to shark bite.

Finally, we must make sure logic reigns supreme over hope and those mechanisms which protect it. Hope can be so dangerous and creates a distraction from the empirical. The determination and illustration of what is logical will be the domain of those who have the spare time and size to dedicate to the task; those who can afford the lobbyist to paint the picture of the world on the window of the legislature. These people will wear out carpet and polish doorhandles making sure their logic is the only logic heard in Canberra. More overly, they will breed a stable of like, logical people to pursue "the logic"; these people will generally come from proximately the top floor minus 3.

The potential of the employee will be determined by the height of the building and the tenure in the workplace. What your family will be, in the long term, is not related to your efforts now as there is no passage of providence down through the generations apart from the family home. The new serfdom rides to their fields in lifts from the car park. Their distance and disparity from the owner is more complex but as wide as it was in times past. The only true emancipator is small business and this opium of self determination must be kept from them for the greater benefit which is too complex for them to comprehend.

The last thing this nation needs is another fuel source, especially a domestic one, or another grocery retailer or another newspaper. Proliferation of media can be especially destabilising as it can distract the attention away from other bread and circus issues that stand in proxy to a more determined path to deliver a higher opportunity of freedom.

Many will say this is too colourful and, of course, I admit to literary licence to portray a real issue to keep you reading and raise your ire. I believe, however, there has been a loss, over time, of the capacity to exercise your freedom as a citizen of this nation; to enter into business as determined by the litmus test of your capacity to purchase and sell product at a profit. Whatever laws we have in Australia, they have allowed the greatest centralisation of retail wealth in the world and they allow that position to be entrenched with only a single direction on a tightening cog.

We lack the political will, on both sides, to have the Teddy Roosevelt fortitude to take on Rockefeller. The political parody to protect the major oil companies from ethanol and the major retailers from stronger trade practices laws, but expose our wheat exports to the onslaught of the US and EU based multinational subsidised grain traders is astounding.

We justify the centralisation of media whilst slowly whittling away their access to information. Prime ministerial aspirants travel on a political Hajj to an elderly gentleman in a distant country to attain his blessing and a hopeful benevolence of good press. The unfortunate reality is that to pursue the course of the highest office in the land without the relevant media imprimaturs is pure folly.

Let us look at the facts. Woolworths has 42% of the retail market, Coles about 36%. Coles is about to be strategically purchased, in part, by Woolworths whose former CEO and current consultant, Mr Rodger Corbet, is a director on Wal-Mart, the largest retailer on the planet. It is depressing that Wal-Mart, with only 20% of the US market, has a far more active campaign by the US people to curtail its grasp on the US citizens’ disposable income.

Coles and Woolworths are the largest holders of gaming, the largest sellers of alcohol, the largest sellers of cigarettes yet they want to take over pharmacies. Maybe this is a new form of vertical integration when they inflict you with a malady then attend to the sale of the treatment. Coles and Woolworths are the largest sellers of fuel and now are responsible, hand in glove, with the oil companies for the greatest demise in small business fuel retailers. Coles and Woolworths are amongst the largest donators to both sides of politics so always have a good hearing in Canberra.

In the UK's late