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In the competitive model ---- the economy of many sellers each with a small share of the total market ---- the restraint on the private exercise of economic power was provided by other firms on the same side of the market. It was the eagerness of competitors to sell, not the complaints of buyers, that saved the latter from spoliation. It was assumed, no doubt accurately, that the nineteenth-century textile manufacturer who overcharged for his product would promptly lose his market to another manufacturer who did not. If all manufacturers found themselves in a position where they could exploit a strong demand, and mark up their prices accordingly, there would soon be an inflow of new competitors. The resulting increase in supply would bring prices and profits back to normal.

As with the seller who was tempted to use his economic power against the customer, so with the buyer who was tempted to use it against his labor or suppliers, the man who paid less than the prevailing wage would lose his lab or force to those who paid the worker his full (marginal) contribution to the earnings of the firm. In all cases the incentive to socially desirable behavior was provided by the competitor. It was to the same side of the market ---- the restraint of sellers by other sellers and of buyers by other buyers, in other words to competition ---- that economists came to look for the self-regulatory mechanisms of the economy.

They also came to look to competition exclusively and in formal; theory still do. The notion that there might be another regulatory mechanism in the economy had been almost completely excluded from economic thought. Thus, with the widespread disappearance of competition in its classical from and its replacement by the small group of firms if not in overt, at least in conventional or tacit, collusion, it was easy to suppose that since competition had disappeared, all effective restraint on private power had disappeared. Indeed, this conclusion was all but inevitable if no search was made for other restraints, and so complete was the preoccupation with competition that none was made.

In fact, new restraints on private power did appear to replace competition. They were nurtured by the same process of concentration which impaired or destroyed competition. But they appeared not on the same side of the market but on the opposite side, not with competitors but with customers or suppliers. It will be convenient to have a name for this counterpart of competition and I shall call it countervailing power.

To begin with a broad and somewhat too dogmatically stated proposition, private economic power is held in check by the countervailing power of those who are subject to it. The first begets the second. The long trend toward concentration of industrial enterprise in the hands of a relatively few firms has brought into existence not only strong sellers, as economists have supposed, but also strong buyers, a fact they have failed to see. The two develop together, not in precise step, but in such manner that there can be no doubt that the one is in response to the other.

21. The word “spoliation” in the first paragraph probably means ____.

A. loot

B. spoil

C. restraint

D. agitation

22. How is economic power applied when a manufacturer wants to hire more workers?

A. He offers them welfare funds.

B. He pays them according to their work.

C. He provides free board and lodging.

D. He gives them chances of getting promoted.

23. Economists didn’t search for other restraints other than competition because ____.

A. they solely focused on competition

B. they had no idea of other restraints

C. they had more interest in competition

D. other restraints were of little importance

24. What does the author think of other economists’ prediction about the outcomes of concentration?

A. They have made wild predictions.

B. They failed to see the rise of merger.

C. They foresaw the appearance of strong buyers.

D. Their supposition was partially true.

25. The passage mainly discusses about ____.

A. business

B. buyers and sellers

C. business model

D. economic power

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