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The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

economist.com

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Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#101

Post by [deleted] »

ersii wrote: post #84
sbov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some seem ridiculous, and some don't. That said, I've seen some called ridiculous that I thought made sense. E.g. I've seen people call requiring nutritional data be available a ridiculous regulation. Maybe the ones I find ridiculous makes sense to some people out there.

Hm, I do like products with nutritional data. But isn't the non-regulatory solution here to just not buy products without nutritional data if so? I mean, I'd certainly contact my favorite brands and request that. If they won't hear me, then maybe there's a local alternative that could?

[deleted]

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#102

Post by sbov »

ersii wrote: post #84
sbov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some seem ridiculous, and some don't. That said, I've seen some called ridiculous that I thought made sense. E.g. I've seen people call requiring nutritional data be available a ridiculous regulation. Maybe the ones I find ridiculous makes sense to some people out there.

Hm, I do like products with nutritional data. But isn't the non-regulatory solution here to just not buy products without nutritional data if so? I mean, I'd certainly contact my favorite brands and request that. If they won't hear me, then maybe there's a local alternative that could?

For some people, if nutritional value is out of sight, it is out of mind. I know that when I order at a restaurant, if the menu contains calorie content of meals it changes my ordering habits. But if you don't care about that segment of the population making an informed decision on what they eat, then yes, your recommendation is a solution.

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#103

Post by ftlio »

rdtsc wrote: post #37
BurningFrog wrote: post #20

A libertarian explanation is that in the age of the Regulatory State, it's often more important to be the biggest lobbyist than to make the best product. "In the Game of Crony Capitalism, you lobby or you die."

Isn't this a common libertarian fallacy - that government and private enterprise are 2 separate entities. Government is bad and should be restricted from interference and private enterprise should not be regulated and market forces will auto-converge to some nice maximum. In reality there is really not that much difference between government and large enterprises. Funny enough that can also be reconciled with the lib…

Two sources I like on this topic:

https://mises.org/sites/default/files/15_3_3.pdf

and Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber

Conceiving of the government and private enterprise as separate entities really doesn't make sense. They both exist as a matter of energy and resource economy (in the sense of managing resources). They're adversarial and mutually beneficial, as is pretty much anything in any ecology.

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#104

Post by jimbokun »

Spooky23 wrote: post #10

IMO, this problem is mostly a factor of the consolidation of finance. The roll up of banking makes it impossible for smaller enterprises to get traditional capital. We moved away from the old, boom/bust distributed banking model towards a weird form of command economy with a cartel of mega-banks, which are really just proxies for the government. People blame technology for the post-recession economy, but I think the…

Would it be just as accurate to say the government is a proxy for the banks?

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#105

Post by convolvatron »

BurningFrog wrote: post #38
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the libertarian explanation is that it contradicts the actual facts. The "age of the Regulatory" state started in the 1930's. It has been in decline for decades--with major sectors of the economy being deregulated in the 1980's and 1990's. In the 1950's and 1960's, regulatory agencies often had the power to directly exclude potential competition and set prices for goods. They have a fraction of those…

> It has been in decline for decades I don't have time to put together a great convincing case, so I'll just say that this is very different from my view. Some high level regulations have been removed, sure, but meanwhile almost every corner of life now has regulations and regulators that have to be obeyed and asked for permission. It would be nice to have some kind of objective measure(s) of the overall level of sta…

I run a very small business metal fabrication facility in one of the most regulated and socialist of cities in the US, San Francisco.

We deal with hazardous chemicals, highly flammable gases and markedly unsafe working conditions.

Me and the rest of the people like me get an inspection once a year from the fire department to make sure minimum standards are kept (to ensure the safety of firefighters if they ever enter). tanks are tied up. flammables are kept in closed cabinets.

We pay the city around $100 a year in fees tied to volume of hazardous materials. Otherwise they leave us completely alone. We have to keep track of whether sales are retail or come with a resellers cert from the state.

When we have extra work, I bring in guys under the table. If I had real employees I would have to have additional insurance, and pay the city mandated minimum wage - which is a lot less than market value for a semi-skilled fabricator.

Its completely* anecdotal, but this boogeyman of massive regulatory burden doesn't seem to be universal. From my tiny little patch I'm free to fail or succeed without any state interference.

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#106

Post by jimbokun »

ersii wrote: post #84
sbov wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some seem ridiculous, and some don't. That said, I've seen some called ridiculous that I thought made sense. E.g. I've seen people call requiring nutritional data be available a ridiculous regulation. Maybe the ones I find ridiculous makes sense to some people out there.

Hm, I do like products with nutritional data. But isn't the non-regulatory solution here to just not buy products without nutritional data if so? I mean, I'd certainly contact my favorite brands and request that. If they won't hear me, then maybe there's a local alternative that could?

No, they won't. It's more profitable for all of them to use cheaper and less healthy ingredients, and lie about what's actually in the food. Cost to consumers to figure out what's really in every package on our own would be overwhelming.

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#107

Post by nickpsecurity »

redorb wrote: post #50
sharemywin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny cause amazon is closer to the 330K per employee mark. Wonder why their P/E is so high? Assuming it took all of walmart's sales it would only get 4 times bigger then now. how much profit can it extract?

Amazon appears to be able to ramp of profit at will via controlling expenditures and promotions. Review this years numbers vs the prior years. I think they wanted to show a investor what it looks like when they 'wanted' to turn a profit instead of plowing money back into everything imaginable. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN&fstype=ii&ei=... If I'm wrong and they are still plowing money back into every…

It's possible. I did a research report on Amazon many years ago since I kept hearing people gripe about them not being profitable. They turned a large enough profit on that year that they could've wiped out all their debt in 1 to 2 years. They could then just keep pulling in profit. It was clear they were instead re-investing all their money back into the company's operations for growth and dominance. They also had this growing business selling computing resources that had taken over a new market with projected long-term potential. ;)

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#108

Post by convolvatron »

convolvatron wrote: post #105
BurningFrog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has been in decline for decades I don't have time to put together a great convincing case, so I'll just say that this is very different from my view. Some high level regulations have been removed, sure, but meanwhile almost every corner of life now has regulations and regulators that have to be obeyed and asked for permission. It would be nice to have some kind of objective measure(s) of the overall level of sta…

I run a very small business metal fabrication facility in one of the most regulated and socialist of cities in the US, San Francisco. We deal with hazardous chemicals, highly flammable gases and markedly unsafe working conditions. Me and the rest of the people like me get an inspection once a year from the fire department to make sure minimum standards are kept (to ensure the safety of firefighters if they ever enter…

EDIT: if i pay someone more than $600, i have to file a 1099. sorry - all of this seems quite irrelevant, but personally i'm tired of having people claim that the small businessman is being repressed by excessive regulation and government tyranny. The small businessman is being repressed by the state of the market and the large businessman.

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#109

Post by sjdchid »

distances wrote: post #24
jsprogrammer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of data are you wanting to move? Would you just want a huge movable block of space that you could mount somewhere?

All data associated with my user account, perhaps with some kind of a schema if applicable. Other services could then implement data import features for this, or for just the part of the data that concerns the service they are providing. Basically, it should be clear that all data connected to a person is irrevocably theirs. Any provider can build services for taking advantage of the data -- but it'd be the user's ri…

Does this mean that before I can add any features to my product, I have to wait for them to be part of the data standard?

Re: The rise of the corporate colossus is a giant problem

#110

Post by aub3bhat »

throwaway729 wrote: post #21
sharemywin wrote: post #8

In 1990 the top three carmakers in Detroit had a market capitalisation of $36 billion and 1.2m employees. In 2014 the top three firms in Silicon Valley, with a market capitalisation of over $1 trillion, had only 137,000 employees.

Gvien the forum we're on, it's worth pointing out that today's white collar laborers are capturing one or two orders of magnitude less of the value they're creating than the blue collar workers of 1990's detroit. 360 billion* divided by 1.2 million = 300000 "per employee". Typical salary to 40,000ish-100,00ish range for laborers/engineers. The disparity in those numbers isn't so bad at all. Conversely, 1 trillion div…

You can't divide market capitalization by number of employees and compare that with "yearly" salary figure. A better comparison would be to divide revenue by number of employees.
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