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Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#171

Post by eberkund »

valuearb wrote: post #136
enraged_camel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, regulations aren't perfect. Yes, regulatory capture is a problem. Neither of those things is a reason to not have regulations. >>that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development What really hurts efficiency and technological development is monopolies. A company that is a monopoly has very little reason to innovate. We se…

ISPs is an anecdote, economies of scale in most business means products are much cheaper if provided by large companies, so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale? The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.

You bring up an important point. I have thought about this issue a lot.

For ISPs the problem is that companies tend to expand. So where 20 years ago an ISP might have been a small regional provider. Things have consolidated and expanded so now that same company owns almost the entire infrastructure and many other services that depend on it. They can also bundle services together to make it harder for a new competitor to enter.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#172

Post by valuearb »

hackbinary wrote: post #88

Welcome to the new world of corporate mercantilism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

Mercantilism is how capitalism dies. Self interested capitalists buy monopolies from politicians until no free markets remain.

Today we have Trump favoring Coal, Oil, military contractors, the Sands corporation (Sheldon Adelson) and corporations searching for special favors such as Tariffs, etc, because of their contributions to his campaign.

Hilary would have favored Wall Street banks, hedge funds, "green companies" in search of federal handouts, unions, etc.

We have the political system we have because of massive contributions by moneyed players who want either handouts or rules to keep competitors out.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#173

Post by valuearb »

ghouse wrote: post #15
douche wrote: post #6

Or make it profitable to build shit in this country again. If you taxed the hell out of manufactured imports, and loosened up the regulations that are choking US businesses to death, you'd have less meth-and-fentanyl scourged abandoned mill towns.

Which specific regulations do you think are choking US businesses to death? I see a lot of handwaving about oppressive regulation, but I don't see anything careful cost-benefit discussion of which regulations are oppressive.

Land use planning, eminent domain, employee regulations, tax regulations, etc, etc, etc. Where do you want to start?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#174

Post by Pica_soO »

douche wrote: post #72
ghouse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which specific regulations do you think are choking US businesses to death? I see a lot of handwaving about oppressive regulation, but I don't see anything careful cost-benefit discussion of which regulations are oppressive.

You've never worked in a blue-collar industry, then. It's a death by 1000 cuts. When your workers are frustrated by the amount of red tape and regulation surrounding their day to day work tasks, something is wrong.

Every factory, the explanation hours for the kindergarden- do not jump, do use the stairwell rails, do read all the rules, do not use the robots for rodeo.

And if you complain about the stupidness of regulations, the responsibility shysters barricading proclaim you hysteric or careless. My personal favorite is lumber-work, where in some of the heavy duty protection equipment you are supposed to wear is so heavy, people make exhausted stupid mistakes and get injured because of the security measure. Example references the Kevlar jackets and trousers- lately partially replaced by lighter plastic protection gear. The worst part is - some regulations introduce routine- and routine kills.

There are good examples, like the Japanese railroad signal system though, so its not all bad.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#175

Post by valuearb »

douche wrote: post #6

Or make it profitable to build shit in this country again. If you taxed the hell out of manufactured imports, and loosened up the regulations that are choking US businesses to death, you'd have less meth-and-fentanyl scourged abandoned mill towns.

If you tax the hell out of manufactured imports, you hurt our best businesses and drive up prices on everything for everyone. You really think you can force Apple to build iPhones in the US for twice the cost that Samsung will build Galaxys in Asia for? Do you think US iOS developers are going to still make $20B a year after you do it? Do you think bringing minimum wage manufacturing jobs back to america is a good idea?

This is the kind of big government republicanism that is killing the party. Import tariffs benefit to benefit a few rich corporations and key donors, and screw everyone else. Frame it as a return to the "good old days" that never existed like you remembered. Taft-Hartley existed in those days, and it was a terrible time.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#177

Post by bluejekyll »

shmerl wrote: post #116
bluejekyll wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, a free market is free for monopolies to form; is free to charge whatever they want; is free to block other companies from entering and selling to a company via any means short of bribery (although even that could be thought of as free); is free to to do anything when competing short of breaking the law. We do not live in a free society, we are not free to do whatever we want; for example, I don't think an…

> Conversely, a free market is free for monopolies to form; Which will make it non free. Free market requires mechanisms of preventing monopolies by its definition.

But what guarantees this freedom? And as I understand it, it doesn't prevent monopolies from forming, it is meant to restrict monopolies from controlling the market.

According to wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

"... are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority."

The government is supposed to step in to block monopolies from controlling the market, but that implies that the government is intervening in the market. All I was pointing out is that there is no perfect system where politics, monopolies and private interests won't compete to control the market.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#178

Post by shmerl »

bluejekyll wrote: post #177
shmerl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conversely, a free market is free for monopolies to form; Which will make it non free. Free market requires mechanisms of preventing monopolies by its definition.

But what guarantees this freedom? And as I understand it, it doesn't prevent monopolies from forming, it is meant to restrict monopolies from controlling the market. According to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market "... are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority." The government is supposed to step in to block monopolies from controlling the market, but…

> But what guarantees this freedom?

That's up to the society which wants to have a free market. For instance, anti-trust laws is one way of doing it.

> The government is supposed to step in to block monopolies from controlling the market, but that implies that the government is intervening in the market.

Someone should to step in here, whether it's government or not, is another question. But clearly, if market has no way of preventing a monopoly, it's not really free.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#179

Post by bobwaycott »

arca_vorago wrote: post #74
skummetmaelk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least to me it looks like making the market more "free" by means of deregulation would only exacerbate the problems mentioned above.

Free market != deregulation

Sadly, it often does in the realm of public discourse as directed by politicians and the average voter who engages.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#180

Post by valuearb »

arrosenberg wrote: post #156
valuearb wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where has economies of scale hurt? ISPs are a special case because regulations make it difficult or impossible for competitors to run cable. But economies of scale turned cars, PCs, consumer electronics, air travel, etc, from rich peoples play toys into affordable products for the masses. As consolidation hit all those industries their products merely got cheaper and in most cases, far better.

Walmart. Walmart has destroyed thousands of businesses. Now you can argue the consumer got lower prices, but low prices don't matter when no one has money to afford them. Additionally, those economies of scale produced cheap, disposable, polluting goods that have an engineered lifetime so that customers have to keep buying the same appliance (or whatever) over and over. The question isn't when economies of scale hurt…

Walmart has been a huge boon to the middle class. It's inarguable that consumers got lower prices, substantially lower prices. That's increased their standard of living.

You can argue that Walmart hurt the standard of living of the Americans (less than 1% of US employees) who actually work for it. But that ignores the fact that the smaller competitors didn't pay much better, and never had a stock option plan, so the pay difference was marginal while the customer benefit was massive. Walmart big advantage wasn't labor costs, it was scale and inventory management from day one.

And it's products are as good or better as the competitors. I hate Walmart, hate shopping there, but when I have to I'm always struck by how good the products are and how amazing the prices are.

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