Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#191

Post by wyager » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

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…

Are you familiar with intelligence squared? I encourage you to watch their debate on the value of walmart to society.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#192

Post by Overtonwindow » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

Oh you mean like Comcast?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#193

Post by wallacoloo » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

dreamdu5t wrote: post #83

The article never establishes what is wrong with rural America in the first place. Why does it need rescuing? Why are businesses with large market share a problem for rural America? The premise that monopolies are bad is never explained. The author never establishes any of this. How did this make it to the front page?

> The article never establishes what is wrong with rural America in the first place.

She presented numbers related to how many new businesses were formed recently in small towns vs large towns. Sure, she didn't go through the hoops to explain that more new businesses = more new jobs = more local wealth, but would that have even contributed to the article?

> The premise that monopolies are bad is never explained.

The article did attempt to explain this through an anecdote about a superior syringe being blocked off the market by another company that held a monopoly on medical devices & arranged contracts with buyers to lock them in.

Maybe she should have been more explicit - and I'm not trying to say that the article's good material for HN - but she did at least touch on most of those points.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#194

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

dreamdu5t wrote: post #83

The article never establishes what is wrong with rural America in the first place. Why does it need rescuing? Why are businesses with large market share a problem for rural America? The premise that monopolies are bad is never explained. The author never establishes any of this. How did this make it to the front page?

[deleted]

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#195

Post by pg314 » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #141

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…

Free markets means they are free to entry, which means creating a monopoly is impossible.

That is nonsense. There are plenty of natural monopolies [1], where competitors are free to enter the market but simple can't compete. E.g. if there are economies of scale (e.g. Google search engine) or network effects (e.g. Facebook).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#196

Post by wyager » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #59

wyager wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. How would you know? We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century, even if we ignore government-granted monopolies via restricted land grants and patents.

This is exactly the same argument people make in favor of socialism..

The thing is, societies that were close to ideal free market capitalism have done extremely well, whereas societies that were close to ideal socialism have generally done very poorly (in the long term). On account of local linearity, I think it's probably OK to use societies that were almost like what is proposed to judge the proposal.

The US isn't even close to a free market (although it used to be very close), so I don't think the current performance of the US economy is a reasonable basis on which to judge free markets.

Similarly, many people used countries that were barely socialist to judge socialism, which is also a bad idea.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#197

Post by tanderson92 » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #188

valuearb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obamacare increased the cost of my families healthcare from $400 a month to $1800 a month, and now my family doesn't have long term healthcare insurance. So please keep telling me how it's better.

So what else changed. Did you get more coverage for things? What happened to your premium? How much did you use your $400 insurance (i.e. did it actually provide coverage.) Price is an important aspect to health-care but devoid of any other information it doesn't mean much.

The framing of your question implies that for every dollar you spend there is some return (risk-adjusted, to account for the possibility you did not need that care). Why should that be the case, if poor public policy allows health insurance providers from acting as monopolies?

Consider: http://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart?t=VHCIX&regio...

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#198

Post by Aloisius » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:22 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #173

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.

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

Eminent domain is killing businesses? In rural areas? How so?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#199

Post by prklmn » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #180

arrosenberg wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're off-base in almost every regard.

>It's inarguable that consumers got lower prices, substantially lower prices. That's increased their standard of living.

It's a multifaceted issue. Yes, Walmart sells cheap stuff, but that's not the company's only impact on the standard of living. The middle class has been steadily shrinking since the 70s, consistent with the rise of Walmart http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/middle-class-jobs-i...

> You can argue that Walmart hurt the standard of living of the Americans (less than 1% of US employees) who actually work for it.

The key issue is not Walmart's employees, but rather the employees of the companies they source from.

> Walmart big advantage wasn't labor costs, it was scale and inventory management from day one.

Once again, it's about the cost of the goods they sell that has a bigger economic impact than their direct labor cost. What goes into the cost of the goods they sell? Labor costs of their suppliers. What did they do after their advantage of scale and great inventory management management eroded? They started sourcing products from markets that were fueled by cheap labor i.e. not the USA. Sam Walton has been rolling in his grave for years: The first true Wal-Mart opened on July 2, 1962, in Rogers, Arkansas.[18] Called the Wal-Mart Discount City store, it was located at 719 West Walnut Street. He launched a determined effort to market American-made products. Included in the effort was a willingness to find American manufacturers who could supply merchandise for the entire Wal-Mart chain at a price low enough to meet the foreign competition. --> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton

> I'm always struck by how good the products are and how amazing the prices are.

You're probably one of very few

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#200

Post by ewjordan » Sun, Apr 23, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #148

bluejekyll wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AHCA, Obamacare is definitely better than before, it guarantees open access to many who didn't have it before. A good thing. But it didn't go far enough. It played in to the corporate healthcare system demands by not offering a competitive public option. The so called Blue Dog democrats blocked that, which is such a shame. Far better than anything the Republicans have put on the table. The problem is that we basicall…

Obamacare increased the cost of my families healthcare from $400 a month to $1800 a month, and now my family doesn't have long term healthcare insurance. So please keep telling me how it's better.

I suspect that you already know the answer here: better !== better for everybody, and worse for you !== worse for everybody.

A lot of people even think that "more expensive for most" still qualifies as "better" as long as it means that people that previously could not get coverage at any cost are now able to, since none of us know when we might develop a "pre-existing condition" that pre-ACA would have made us uninsurable forever.

Whether a system is truly better or worse depends on how you account for all the different people that it helps or hurts. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jan/05/... has some examples that suggest that things are better for a whole lot of people under ACA, but I'm sure other groups and analyses will paint different pictures.