Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 353 posts

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#221

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

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…

Walmart has certainly not been a huge boon to the middle class, if they have been, we have not seen any evidence of it. The middle class is shrinking. So if this is true, that means the middle class is doing MUCH worse than realized.

From what I've read, Despite the cheaper prices, there was a net loss in jobs and significant damage to small business-resulting in higher losses in the local economy than gained from cheaper product. I don't know if there's enough evidence of all of that, but it seems logical.

Also you're ignoring the local economic impact of closing small businesses. It's not just the small retail store employee that loses out. Small businesses close-that means there's less need for accountants, cleaners, advertisers, real estate, etc. Walmart does all of this at the corporate level. This results in even more, well paying job loss, and sets off a spiral that destroys these communities.

> And it's products are as good or better as the competitors.

Sounds like confirmation bias to me. Nothing I ever see or buy from walmart has ever been quality, but I couldn't present that as evidence.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#222

Post by flamedoge »

cs702 wrote: post #4

"I started a manufacturing company in Little Elm, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to produce the first-ever automatically retracting syringe to eliminate the risk of nurses contracting HIV through accidental needle sticks. The syringe received rave reviews from nurses, hospital executives and public health officials, a major grant from the National Institutes of Health and robust private investment. But when my partn…

What about outside of US?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#223

Post by s73ver »

rndmize wrote: post #31
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you call LGBT rights, women's rights, police consent decrees, environmental issues, and health care, just off the top of my head, meaningless?

Not the GP, but these are social issues largely, and while I care about them, I consider them less important than economic issues (for a multitude of reasons). And on economic/business issues, the two parties seems to have minimal differences.

It's easy for those who aren't affected by those social issues to consider them less important.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#224

Post by s73ver »

valuearb wrote: post #152
mozumder wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point in your false equivalency? Are you implying that the 20 million people that now have medical coverage because of Democrats pushing for Obamacare isn't worth it? Was that all "talk"? I'm seriously trying to understand your "equivalency" position. Let me know what the Republicans would have done for health care? Right now it seems that the only thing they've done is to actually limit universal health…

I don't believe 20M more people have medical coverage because of Obamacare, that's a lagging indicator that's likely dead wrong. If you are self employed it made medical insurance unaffordable. Before Obamacare I paid $400 a month for a $5k deductible plan for my family. Post Obamacare I paid $1,100/month, then $1,400/month and quit when it went to $1,800 a month. So my family has no long term medical insurance and n…

Unless you can come up with something to dispute it, you are not entitled to your own facts.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#225

Post by s73ver »

lawrencewu wrote: post #25
peacetreefrog wrote: post #9

Her two examples, the medical and agriculture sectors, are two of the most regulated industries around. A lot of these "monopolies" result because of regulation pushed by combination of well-meaning and self interested people and corporations (see bootleggers and baptists). Her examples suggest it'd be better to focus on the marriage between corporations and government, which allows companies to focus their energy on…

I don't know why you are getting downvoted because you're absolutely right. The first three markets named (airlines, telecommunications, health care) are all heavily regulated and the barrier to entries are controlled by the government, not natural market forces. Monopolies are not all bad. Sometimes a company has a monopoly because they just offer a better product (Amazon, Google) and they shouldn't be punished for…

"The first three markets named (airlines, telecommunications, health care) are all heavily regulated and the barrier to entries are controlled by the government, not natural market forces."

Not true. It costs a lot of money to purchase a commercial aircraft, and not because of regulation. It also costs a lot of money to start up an ISP, and not just because of regulation.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#226

Post by wsxcde »

jessaustin wrote: post #14
tanderson92 wrote: post #5

Highly relevant: Matt Stoller in The Atlantic: "How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul In the 1970s, a new wave of post-Watergate liberals stopped fighting monopoly power. The result is an increasingly dangerous political system." https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-dem...

This really opened my eye: a long time ago, there was actually a meaningful difference between voting D and voting R. I can't really imagine voting in such a context, but it sounds nice...

That is simply not true. You don't even have to look too far in the past to see examples of meaningful differences even if you restrict yourself to economic/financial/business issues. The most recent example is the internet privacy repeal bill. But even Obama's term alone saw Dodd-Frank, the auto bailout, the stimulus package following the great recession all supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.

The two parties are nowhere near the same on economic issues. Yes, they are both largely in favour of free trade. But there are very significant differences in terms of philosophies the two parties take towards regulatory behaviour.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#227

Post by michaelmrose »

jpindar wrote: post #182
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…

How does Wal-mart stay in business if "no one has money to afford them"?

Walmart isn't singular they are part of a huge array of companies paying shit wages.

A lot of people in the same economic class as the workers are receiving government assistance meaning you are footing the bill for the food stamps that feeds the cashiers kids while ironically congratulating yourself on the good deal you got.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#228

Post by michaelmrose »

wyager wrote: post #196
mikeyouse wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When has a close to ideal free market existed?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#229

Post by ericHosick »

jaredklewis wrote: post #206
ericHosick wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Free market" implies "I can do what I want" I always though free implied free from non-consensual acts. It's not much of a free market if your actions are non-consensual (1). (1) Defining what makes an action consensual is difficult but doable.

Difficult indeed. An ordinary American internet user consents to countless pages of legalese in adhesion and other unread contracts (TOSs, privacy policies and so on) everyday day. These days, every website, piece of software, digital service or product comes with pages upon pages of contracts to which the user must consent to even walk in the door. Reading all of them is easily a full time job. So, no one has coerce…

This is a deep discussion to have: too deep for a medium like HN. That being said...

Your points pre-suppose parties consented to a dispute resolution system: one that is based on arbitrary boundaries and quite monopolistic (1).

> I can see why people don't think that the barebones style of "free market" is very free.

So, I agree that it is hard for people to understand what consent is when they were never given a chance to choose which dispute resolution system(s) they can participate in.

(1) Example being I was born in the USA so somehow automatically consented to the rules of the land.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#230

Post by FireBeyond »

valuearb wrote: post #186
stinkytaco wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal? Or it doesn't meet the minimum qualifications for the tax benefit, because those are quite different. https://www.healthcare.gov/private-plan-exceptions-outside-o... As to costs, those vary widely by state. This recent article in the NYTimes was a fairly good overview of how policy decisions can affect the premiums: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/health/how-gop-in-2-state...

Illegal. The reason my families health insurance was $400 a month was because the insurer could exclude pre-existing conditions. That's no longer allowed. And I'm self employed. The ban on pre-existing conditions was done either because the drafters of Obamacare have no clue what insurance actually is, or they actually wanted to destroy health insurance. No one is going to pay for coverage when healthy if they can si…

> The ban on pre-existing conditions was done either because the drafters of Obamacare have no clue what insurance actually is, or they actually wanted to destroy health insurance. No one is going to pay for coverage when healthy if they can sign up when sick.

Oh good, so the alternative is a market where you'll never get coverage again once you are diagnosed with a condition - or even before, given that insurers have been sued for attempting to cancel coverage when a condition is diagnosed by going back and looking at previous physician visits. "Oh, we know you weren't diagnosed with cancer back then, but you went to the doctor a bit, and the things you went for are consistent with that, so we determined you had cancer when you got coverage, and as a result are canceling your policy for this".

Health insurance is not insurance in any definition of the word. Insurers want as many of the benefits of insurance as possible while wanting to assume as few of the risks as possible, things they shouldn't be able to do as an insurer. I've watched it for a long time (hint: one of my jobs is designing claims adjudication and management systems for health insurers).

Go your way, where insurers can exclude, and in very short order, everyone will. And then the only ones who offer coverage that support pre-existing conditions will be the ones willing to gouge those people.

But you won't care, as long as _your_ premium is $400/mo, right? Or at least until someone in your family gets sick.

Here's the dirty little secret: actuaries and statisticians working for the insurers factor in all these conditions (in the medical sense) into their premium accounting. What percentage of what demographic is likely to get an illness or disease, etc.

They have to. Or they'd go bankrupt.

So they do. And then they work feverishly to cover as few of those people as possible, to increase their profit profile, reduce their exposure and risk.

If that's what people "wanting to destroy health insurance" want to be rid of? I entirely support them.

Post reply on HN