Competition

A thought struck me this morning when I went to the local shop to buy the Echo. I glanced at the other newspapers and saw a myriad of mostly pathetic headlines and thought it was stupid that so many newspapers were total rubbish.
Then I thought that no matter how stupid they are people are entitled to read what they want to.

And that got me thinking about competition. Competition is no bad thing when it comes to things like newspapers. We might shake our heads over the fear mongering of the Daily Mail, or the celebrity tat in The Sun but we don't have to buy them. We are free to ignore them if they are not what we want.

On the other hand, there are some instances when having competition is counter productive. Recruitment agencies for example.

When I first started out job hunting as a teenager, there were no recruitment agencies in my town. Every job going was advertised in the jobcentre. A one stop shop as it were. It advertised every job available locally and also a few national vacancies. Advisers were also able to look for a particular job title in any other area.
Many employers now don't use the jobcentre, they use recruitment agencies instead. While this may seem logical, it makes it a bit of a nightmare for the jobhunter.
You don't want to miss any potential job so you have to sign up with all of them.
You make an appointment, go along with your CV, then fill in a form with the same details that are on said CV and then you do the tests. Spelling, grammar, maths and typing speed. (yes I am using my own experience of looking for admin work, other types of work will obviously not use the same tests)

And you do this for every single agency you sign up to. And you still have to use the jobcentre, because there are still a few jobs there and of course you have to use to to sign for your benefit.
That's an awful lot of time spent doing the same thing.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier and much more streamlined if there were still a one stop shop?