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Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

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Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#321

Post by mcv »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #28
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…

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.

Freedom takes work to protect. An unregulated market is not necessarily the same as a free market. Or maybe no market is unregulated, and the real choice is between a market regulated for the common good and in the interest of freedom, or one regulated for the interest of specific players on that market.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#322

Post by mcv »

Qwertious wrote: post #104
skummetmaelk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.

'People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.' Don't call it the free market. Call it what it is: COMPETITION. "Free market" implies "I can do what I want", but frankly we don't WANT people to be free to pull anti-c…

I like "open market". It implies it's accessible to everybody.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#323

Post by flyingfences »

untangle wrote: post #320
flyingfences wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Intellectual Property" is the use of the State's violence in an attempt to enforce an artificial scarcity upon something that is naturally non-scarce - information. It is inherently antithetical to a free society and always ends up hurting the everyman (and society at large) in the long run.

When I hear "IP" I now perceive "rent." Rent is drag and is a prime mover in income inequality.

The two are not at all alike, though. Rent is payment made in exchange for the use of a physical, scarce resource. Information, in contrast, is inherently non-scarce.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#324

Post by flyingfences »

enraged_camel wrote: post #284
nebabyte wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not arguing for perfect, he's arguing for sustainable. No system of regulations you build won't eventually be corrupted because (exactly as he says) there exists no neutral desireless arbiters in our world to enforce them. No system of regulations you build WON'T get you back here eventually. [0] [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=2It2HRGGtCk

>>No system of regulations you build won't eventually be corrupted because (exactly as he says) there exists no neutral desireless arbiters in our world to enforce them. I don't believe that. Al Capone was notorious for bribing the police and the judges, or intimidating them and their families if bribery failed, to the point where many people thought he was invincible. That turned out to be incorrect: https://en.wiki…

> We just need to identify them and put them in the right positions.

Such an approach hinges on the presumption that the people doing the identifying and appointing are also virtuous and non-corruptible. Any attempt at a guarantee of the neutrality of the arbiters and enforcers will quickly descend into a Seussian "who's watching the watch watchers?" scenario.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#325

Post by Clubber »

ende wrote: post #264
Clubber wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end state of free market (as in free of government regulation, not free to compete) is monopoly. Capitalist societies understand that and regulate to ensure freedom to compete. Europe is much better at this than the US.

Incorrect. Monopolies do not naturally occur in most markets (with a few exceptions). The barriers to entry that create monopolies arise largely from regulatory capture. Some level of regulation is often necessary, but devising regimes that don't favor early entrants is very difficult. Nobody does this well; neither the US nor Europe.

Often times, companies in the US lobby for regulation that adds barrier to entry. Of course economies of scale greatly contribute to barrier to entry, forcing an entrant to have large volume to even compete. I've read where large companies sell products cheaper than competitors can buy them wholesale. Once there are a few large competitors, mergers happen resulting in monopoly or near monopoly.

Of course industries like food service don't have monopolies, but they don't pay very well. They are also geographically restricted. I don't really care about those companies, they don't contribute much to the middle class.

Google is an effective monopoly, Amazon is certainly headed that way. Facebook is pretty close. Microsoft would be except the rare occurrence of someone writing a free operating system that was very good at the dawn of the internet age. Airlines are effective monopolies in their selective hubs. Monsanto certainly. They don't have to be the last company standing to show monopolistic tendencies in my mind. Microsoft wasn't technically a monopoly in the 90s, but it might as well have been.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#326

Post by RugnirViking »

mozumder wrote: post #319
eecc wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wo-hoo... what's this name calling! Are you seriously accusing the latest American spin to socialism as xenophobic racists?! You serious? So let's hear from you, what are we supposed to do? Respectfully defer to the pundits endlessly quibbling about the differences between D and R? That is also part of the problem, in case you hadn't noticed...

> So let's hear from you, what are we supposed to do? You're supposed to pick a side, from the choices given to you, because that's how government works. Government is not about getting what you want. Government is about picking from the limited choices given to you. Complaints about your limited choices go unheeded, because no one wants 300 million choices in government since everyone wants to be their own pretty pr…

'Government is not about getting what you want. '

This speaks for itself

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#327

Post by sangnoir »

jgalt212 wrote: post #55
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...

Amen. Matt Stoller is basically the playbook and on how the democrats can regain the common man. My family are multi-generational democrats and it would literally blow the mind of my lost past immigrant grandfather if knew that his party's nominee was taking bigly money from Deutsche Bank and Goldman and soliciting donations from commodities oligarchs from lawless countries. And on top of that, not seemingly giving a…

> Matt Stoller is basically the playbook and on how the democrats can regain the common man.

I'm a common man and that there sounds a bit socialistic. Real Americans(TM) pull themselves up by their bootstraps through grit, determination and hard work - they don't need big-government meddling.

My feeling is that a negative view of regulation/government action has been unchallenged for decades in red America. In those areas, the democrats will never gain the common man that way because the negativity has been internalized.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#328

Post by jessaustin »

mozumder wrote: post #319
eecc wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wo-hoo... what's this name calling! Are you seriously accusing the latest American spin to socialism as xenophobic racists?! You serious? So let's hear from you, what are we supposed to do? Respectfully defer to the pundits endlessly quibbling about the differences between D and R? That is also part of the problem, in case you hadn't noticed...

> So let's hear from you, what are we supposed to do? You're supposed to pick a side, from the choices given to you, because that's how government works. Government is not about getting what you want. Government is about picking from the limited choices given to you. Complaints about your limited choices go unheeded, because no one wants 300 million choices in government since everyone wants to be their own pretty pr…

You've deteriorated to self-parody here. Also you've conceded, in bizarrely triumphant fashion, the awful truth I highlighted at the top of the thread: in USA we effectively have no choice in political outcomes.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#329

Post by [deleted] »

adwn wrote: post #304
virmundi wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I'm pro lynch mob. Allow a free market with few if any regulations. Also allow for common violence if a company strays too far from customs. If a CEO is shown to pollute the water ways there is always an AR15 out there. Few people fear violence since they know the law is weak.

> Also allow for common violence if a company strays too far from customs. If a CEO is shown to pollute the water ways there is always an AR15 out there. I come to HN so that I don't have to read such stupid, knee-jerk, badly thought through opinions. If you have to, post this in a Facebook comment thread, but not here. What do you think would be the consequences of legally allowing lynching? And I mean all consequen…

[deleted]

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#330

Post by [deleted] »

sanderjd wrote: post #244
tetha wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar things are happening in germany. Most people I talk to feel like the 2 major parties have lost their grit, their profile, and they have become mostly the same. However, in germany, this just gives new parties chances to rise. I think that's a sign of a healthy democray - if the old parties stop representing the people, voters will replace them.

That happens in the US too, but instead of new parties, we just end up with the existing parties shifting what they stand for over time. The Republican party may be going through such a shift right now (though it remains to be seen what their platform will be next year), and both parties shifted in fundamental ways in the middle of the 20th century.

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