An article on Foxnews.com, written by Doug McKelway, reports on the Federal
Trade Commission’s investigation of the Music Teachers National Association
(MTNA) for engaging in “anti-competitive practices.” The MTNA, an organization
that consists mostly of private music instructors, has a passage in their
ethics code that states that teachers cannot recruit students from other
private teachers. The FTC sees this as a, in McKelway’s words, “threat to
America’s consumers.” The Article also mentioned that the purpose of the FTC
when it was created in 1914 was to prevent monopolies from occurring.
In
a Free-Enterprise Economy, competition breeds profits and economic prosperity,
because it forces people to constantly strive to improve their business. This
is why a monopoly, where one business dominates an entire industry (meaning
there is no competition within an industry) can be detrimental to the economy.
However, investigating the MTNA for not breeding competition because they are
not recruiting students from other private teachers is going too far. They are
focusing on something that is trivial and has little impact on the economy.
This is yet another case of somebody being so pedantic that they jeopardize
their common sense. As Clifford Winston of the Brooking Institution said, “It’s
very hard to understand the motivation for what they’re trying to do.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/06/music-teachers-under-investigation-by-ftc/
I was reading this article, and a representative from the MTNA was saying how they have this law in order for teachers to be able to work well with their colleagues, and not worry about competition over students. Is the FTC trying to say that monetary competition is more important than colleagues working well together? Imagine how hectic the local and national music industry would be if teachers started competing over other teachers' students. In the long run, this would be detrimental to the music community, and would hardly, if at all, benefit the national economy while doing it.
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