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UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

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Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#31
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you see with the collapse of these companies is more concentration of market power, not less.

Please explain this with Kodak.

I know you're being coy picking the example from your list where the market leader wasn't simply forced out by an even bigger market leader.

But in fact we have seen a lot of consolidation in the photographic industry. Back in the days of film everyone had to choose from a select few manufactures of chemical film. but people who created photography had a wide variety of equipment manufacturers to choose from, and those who did it professionally had a wide variety of sales channels into which to sell what they produced. Good photography was valuable and many thousands of people could support themselves as freelance photographers.

Now we still have a decent set of SLR vendors. There's Nikon, Canon, Sony. Um, probably some Chinese manufacturers. The point and shoot market has been eclipsed by the camera phone, for which there are now exactly two platform providers.

But the collapse in price of photographs also produced a collapse in value of photography. All those freelancers found their sales channels dry up. There wasn't Look or Life or Nat Geo or hundreds of other publishers who needed photographs and were willing to pay top dollar for excellent work. Instead photographers found themselves trying to sell the rights for pennies on a few photo agency platforms, or more likely surviving entirely on event work.

The choke point at film manufacturing went away for sure, but we have a new choke point at the publishing and delivery end, and this choke point exerts vastly more control over the entire industry than the film duopoly ever did.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#32
Why isn't the conclusion that the political systems are too powerful then? Regulatory capture and IP issues are the fault of a political system that can wield too much power.

The limited government people would seem to have a strong case that power should be removed from the political system since it is so easily corrupted.

I don't quite understand how the answer to a political system easily manipulated is to make it even more powerful.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#33

Maybe . . . It's not intellectual property that keeps internet companies at the top of the pile, for the most part, unless we are counting trade secrets and domain names as intellectual property (and they are in a sense, but not the sense that requires a government to create an artificial market for them).

Not often addressed in the largest of internet companies is how little the pay for bandwidth and transit. Google literally pays ZERO for internet access in either direction since they bought so much fiber in late 90s early 2000s. This is how they can run search (both directions) and youtube.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if it's Sears, RCA, IBM, Kodak, etc.

This is irrelevant when the problem we are considering is concentration of the market forces. Of course in this process many large firms will be swallowed by even larger companies. Market concentration doesn't guarantee that large companies will continue to exist, only that the remaining ones will own most everything.

And the shareholders of the companies that swallow or replace older companies most likely will be the same to a large extent.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#35

Why isn't the conclusion that the political systems are too powerful then? Regulatory capture and IP issues are the fault of a political system that can wield too much power. The limited government people would seem to have a strong case that power should be removed from the political system since it is so easily corrupted. I don't quite understand how the answer to a political system easily manipulated is to make it…

What do you mean by "powerful" in the first sentence? Are you saying "power" is a scalar quantity?

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#36
As a Republican elected official in a southeastern state, I have a front-row seat to what this article points at.

The road construction industry used to be a great opportunity for small business people to create for themselves a substantial income. These days, all the companies in our area are owned by conglomerates, backed by billion dollar financial institutions. If you were to risk a million or two or an asphalt plant, they will undercut your prices till you go bankrupt, then inflate their prices once again. The two companies in our area will bid on all of our projects, but it's clear they are in cahoots when it comes to their pricing.

By our estimates, the taxpayers are overpaying by at least 15% - 20%. In my mind, this robs others of opportunity and transfers wealth from tax-paying citizens to billion dollar companies.

No one points this out because the road builders give a lot to politicians. Go against them, and they'll spend enough to have the public label you a RINO which, in this neck of the woods, can get you booted from office.

I've wished for some time that someone could create a modular asphalt plant that can be packed up on trucks and taken to wherever the job site is. I think companies like this could help regulate prices and make a lot of money.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#37

Why isn't the conclusion that the political systems are too powerful then? Regulatory capture and IP issues are the fault of a political system that can wield too much power. The limited government people would seem to have a strong case that power should be removed from the political system since it is so easily corrupted. I don't quite understand how the answer to a political system easily manipulated is to make it…

Is the problem that governments have too much power, or that they place what power they do have in the service of the rentiers instead of the people? The more power you take away from government, the more government-like power corporations themselves will wield directly. What kind of world will it be when all essential services are provided - or withheld - at the whim of the already powerful? When environmental or workplace regulation are replaced by courts, and the courts themselves are "arbitration services" run by the very same people you're suing, backed by security services run likewise? When the unprofitable or unpopular become "outlaws" in the very real sense of being denied basic services or protections afforded to the more compliant?

No, that dystopia - not a coincidence that so many SF writers have predicted it - is not the direction we should go. Governments have a responsibility to represent the people collectively where the people can not represent themselves individually. True liberty requires that tension between people-via-government and other kinds of power. It's awful that the government we have is pulling on the wrong end of the rope, but saying they should drop it entirely is practically the same. They should be pulling on our side.

This "make government tiny" philosophy leads to oligarchy and neo-feudalism as sure as Soviet communism did, for much the same reason. It's just another tactic that the autocratically minded use to weaken or discredit their potentially most effective adversary. What we need is a robust government willing to stand up to the oligarchs, not kowtow to them.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#38

As a Republican elected official in a southeastern state, I have a front-row seat to what this article points at. The road construction industry used to be a great opportunity for small business people to create for themselves a substantial income. These days, all the companies in our area are owned by conglomerates, backed by billion dollar financial institutions. If you were to risk a million or two or an asphalt p…

maybe one day an even bigger company such as Amazon will eat the asphalt companies lunch then. Their margin is someone bigger's opportunity. Or maybe 15-20% profit is just reasonable and competitive with other industries.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of which were blatantly mismanaged It's easy to be a monday morning quarterback about management. Even so, no company is immune from blatant mismanagement. It's not a no-brainer to effectively manage a large corporation, not remotely. For an example, look at Apple in the 1990s. A series of CEOs were all unable to get the company moving again, until Jobs was asked to return. (And those CEOs were all experienced…

Experienced in selling soda.

That would be Sculley, who was also tutored by Jobs in how to manage Apple. The other CEOs were from the tech business.

Re: UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From 1955 to 2016 only 12% of firms remain in the Fortune 500. I used to have a chart which showed the top 10 corporations by market cap, decade by decade. You didn't have to go very far back before you didn't even recognize the company names. I'm old enough to remember all the fear IBM struck into the hearts of everyone in the computer biz in the 1980s, fear that seems so laughable now it's hard to even remember i…

General Electric?

GE is notable as the only long term survivor. But it hasn't grown to engulf the world, either.
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