Um pequeno passo

A cadeia Continente vai abrir o primeiro espaço de venda de medicamentos em grandes superfícies, quando inaugurar a loja de Loures, com preços até 10% mais baixos.
Para quando o livre estabelecimento de farmácias, sem as restrições de acesso ao mercado criadas pelas restrições administrativas actualmente em vigor?
Recordo que a liberdade de entrada no mercado é um factor fundamental para que se obtenham os ganhos que derivam da concorrência. Como escreveu Israel Kirzner ("The Irresistible Force of Market Competition"):

Following a long tradition in economics going back at least to Adam Smith, Austrians define a competitive market not as a situation where no participant or potential participant has the power to make any difference, but as a market where no potential participant faces nonmarket obstacles to entry. (The adjective “nonmarket” refers, primarily, to government obstacles to entry; it is used to differentiate such obstacles from, for example, high production costs that might discourage entry. These latter do not constitute noncompetitive elements in a market; to be able to enter means to be able to enter a market if one judges such entry to be economically promising-it does not mean to be able to enter without having to bear the relevant costs of production.) That is, a situation is competitive if no incumbent participant possesses privileges that protect him against the possible entry of new competitors.

The achievements that free markets are able to attain depend, in the Austrian view, on freedom of entry, that is, on the absence of privilege. It is because the law of supply and demand (as understood by Austrians) depends crucially on freedom of entry that this meaning of the term “competition” is so important.