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

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

promarket.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 73 posts

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

#61

Post by ethbro »

fny wrote: post #59
programmingpol wrote: post #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 p…

Your problem is that big business has conflated free-market capitalism with the right to monopoly and convinced your constituency that anti-trust regulation is destructive to a free market when, in truth, oligopoly leads to corruption of the free-market and a farce of capitalism. You need to work on educating your citizenship gradually until they understand the conditions wherein capitalism actually works. That way t…

Pretty sure parent is aware what "their problem" is, seeing as they have a front seat to it. ;)

And "educating the citizenry" as a feasible tactic in local races is an exercise in futility. For the cost of an educational campaign, his or her opponent (or their supporters) could run attack advertising that would certainly lose parent the election.

Aggregating like businesses and pushing for change higher up the political food chain is more effective, albeit not without its own risks.

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

#62

Post by llukas »

WalterBright wrote: post #54
Mz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, you don't make money that way. He is talking about selling photos, not giving them away.

Seems to me that having so many people taking and publishing photographs driving the price to zero is the literal opposite of choke points and concentration of market power.

Right now power shifted to publisher/distributor hands - and media market consolidating.

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

#63

Post by intended »

hippich wrote: post #55
programmingpol wrote: post #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 p…

So problem, as I understand, is that it requires significant amount of capital to get going for independent company, and they might go under if big company cut them. And the big companies undercut independent ones so later they could raise price. So I had this question - what if state would commit to 10-20 years worth of contracts with some kind of locked in rate (adjusted for inflation or something), not just one of…

Remember that all such plans have been tried in our lifetimes alone.

Someone can easily run a campaign against such a system By saying it’s anti competition, or drives complacency.

In a meta sense you are almost always fighting against the current local equilibrium.

You will always need someone to inspect and call out BS behavior.

This means good policing and investigating and reporting.

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

#64

Post by kunimu »

dnautics wrote: post #46
notacoward wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

No, the Soviet system led to feudalism for a predictable reason, that in fact was predicted in stunning detail before it even existed. http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm Even if you claim that the outcomes are the same, you cannot claim that the paths are identical, that's just lazy argumentation that ignores the history of philosophy.

What was the predictable reason?

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

#65

Post by notacoward »

dnautics wrote: post #46
notacoward wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

No, the Soviet system led to feudalism for a predictable reason, that in fact was predicted in stunning detail before it even existed. http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm Even if you claim that the outcomes are the same, you cannot claim that the paths are identical, that's just lazy argumentation that ignores the history of philosophy.

> Even if you claim that the outcomes are the same, you cannot claim that the paths are identical

I didn't claim the paths are identical, and don't believe they are. I said the reasons are much the same. They both deny human nature. One relies on a level of altruism that doesn't exist. The other relies on a level of "rational self interest" that doesn't exist. Both rely on a level of honesty that doesn't exist. Similar reasons, less similar paths, almost identical outcomes.

> that's just lazy argumentation

No, lazy argumentation is presenting no argument but a link to someone else who says "Time forbids the treatment of that phase of the subject here" when addressing the matter at hand. There is no way to that anarchist (what we would now call libertarian) utopia but the same kind of revolution that led to communism's notable real-world failures. Furthermore, there is no way to maintain such a system and keep it from devolving into oligarchy other than to have a robust government to keep the four monopolies from re-forming. This "anarchy" in practice ends up looking a lot like modern socialism.

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

#66

Post by programmingpol »

fny wrote: post #59
programmingpol wrote: post #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 p…

Your problem is that big business has conflated free-market capitalism with the right to monopoly and convinced your constituency that anti-trust regulation is destructive to a free market when, in truth, oligopoly leads to corruption of the free-market and a farce of capitalism. You need to work on educating your citizenship gradually until they understand the conditions wherein capitalism actually works. That way t…

Well said. I could not agree with this more.

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

#67

Post by programmingpol »

hippich wrote: post #55
programmingpol wrote: post #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 p…

So problem, as I understand, is that it requires significant amount of capital to get going for independent company, and they might go under if big company cut them. And the big companies undercut independent ones so later they could raise price. So I had this question - what if state would commit to 10-20 years worth of contracts with some kind of locked in rate (adjusted for inflation or something), not just one of…

I've floated this idea around but what I found out was that it's against our state's laws to have such open contracts. Changing the state law would be difficult (road builders have a big voice in state government). We also, by law, have to accept the lowest bid that meets specs, even if that means higher prices in the long run. Championing accepting higher bids would be difficult come election time. The attack ads would read, "Politician A wants to give his buddies a sweet-heart deal at the expense of the taxpayer."

It's a very difficult problem.

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

#68

Post by nickthemagicman »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #60

This is a super interesting. 2 interesting bits of history I feel people need to consider on this topic; Firstly in my limited discussions I'm surprised how many people fail to recognise economic equality the west see's today is not normal. It's a ~70 year blip in 5,000 years of history that was heavily manufactured to be this way. Not a result of 'capitalism' as many people I've seen discussing this like to say. As…

This is a very interesting point. In the grand scheme of the human race is it realistic to call 60's-80's America, the best time time the middle class has ever had?

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

#69

Post by Gustomaximus »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #68
Gustomaximus wrote: post #60

This is a super interesting. 2 interesting bits of history I feel people need to consider on this topic; Firstly in my limited discussions I'm surprised how many people fail to recognise economic equality the west see's today is not normal. It's a ~70 year blip in 5,000 years of history that was heavily manufactured to be this way. Not a result of 'capitalism' as many people I've seen discussing this like to say. As…

This is a very interesting point. In the grand scheme of the human race is it realistic to call 60's-80's America, the best time time the middle class has ever had?

Best is very subjective. And I as an Australian look at this from that view. I do think it would be fair to say this period gave 2 very core human benefits to the masses better than any other period; security and opportunity.

Security being access to; income, housing and healthcare.

Opportunity being; social mobility and access to education.

IMO these 5 points should be the core goals of a functioning society. Outside this much of the rest works itself out.

Oh and the other one I thought of while writing, we didn't have any great wars during this time. Not to diminish Vietnam/Korea but the majority didn't experience war like many previous modern era generations had.

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

#70

Post by dredmorbius »

fny wrote: post #59
programmingpol wrote: post #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 p…

Your problem is that big business has conflated free-market capitalism with the right to monopoly and convinced your constituency that anti-trust regulation is destructive to a free market when, in truth, oligopoly leads to corruption of the free-market and a farce of capitalism. You need to work on educating your citizenship gradually until they understand the conditions wherein capitalism actually works. That way t…

Conflated, or used the shibboleth of "free-market capitalism" as a cover for monopoly mercantilistic rent-extraction.

Having put a fairly considerable amount of study into the history of economic thought, back to Greek and Roman times (see Backhouse's The Ordinary Business of Life for a comprehensive, if dry, overview of mainstream economic thought), and with a strong focus on Smith to present, this problem is a pervasive one.

The irony is that it's practiced quite ardently by many of the loudest "defenders" of free-market systems. (Not always -- there are straight-up monopolists who have given up all pretense. Most, though, preach and act inconsistently.)

Post reply on HN