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Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

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Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#131

Post by bwestergard »

joycian wrote: post #52

Does anybody here know of a good modern book about land value tax or Georgist economics in general? Any (constructive) opinions would also be welcome.

"Radical Markets" by Weyl and Posner (2018) is a very accessible summary of what you might call "neo-Georgist" thinking.

George's essential political idea was that society is not a struggle between labor (workers) and capital (entrepreneurs, investors, landowners, etc), but between rentiers - paradigmatically landlowners, but in neo-Georgist thought all "owners" - and the "productive" classes (labor and entrepreneurial capital). For George, the general interest can always be identified with capital accumulation. Rentiers stand in the way of capital accumulation, and thus in the way of the general interest.

Many software developers feel the line between entrepreneurial capital and highly remunerated wage work is quite blurry because, for at least two decades, they have seen a significant amount of upward and downward mobility. Who doesn't know someone who started a "lifestyle business", retired early, or cashed out some stock options and played the VC game a bit? Combine this with the obvious dysfunctionality of the Bay Area housing market, VC excess, etc. and Georgism seems entirely natural.

The difficult questions for the neo-Georgists include: Can capital accumulation really be identified with welfare? Given how stagnant labor productivity enhancing technological development has been for two decades, can we really assume institutional changes will boost it? If they can't, doesn't this make the normative questions all the more difficult?

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#132

Post by Super_Jambo »

specialist wrote: post #83
zozbot234 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI, profits do not really explain inequality. It's a wages dynamic, where the premium that's paid for highly-skilled work tends to grow over time. Separately, wages in highly-regulated sectors (such as law and healthcare) also show significant growth, even though skill requirements haven't changed all that much in these occupations.

I still have zero intuition about cost disease. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease The only notion that makes any sense to me (so far) is Graeber's bullshit jobs thesis. Being a life long patient, my observation is that healthcare workers have become A LOT more skillful, knowledgeable, educated. The natural trend towards ever greater specialization and all that. I know nothing about lawyers, so can…

Have you read Phishing for Phools? The basic idea is that companies innovate in deception as well as efficiency.

This is another way to explain bullshit jobs, obviously someone working to con their customers for their bosses will feel their job is bullshit.

To me this explains most of what is going on. Markets are evolutionary environments for profit making companies. Companies must innovate in production efficiency and product quality. But they must also stay competitive in corrupting regulators, fooling customers and short changing workers.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#133

Post by ls612 »

kgin wrote: post #125
amaajemyfren wrote: post #93

TIL: NAIRU. Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment refers to a theoretical level of unemployment below which inflation would be expected to rise. It was first introduced as NIRU (non-inflationary rate of unemployment) by Franco Modigliani and Lucas Papademos in 1975, as an improvement over the "natural rate of unemployment" concept which was proposed earlier by Milton Friedman. In the United States, estimate…

It’s a fascinating thing to realize that policymakers consider zero unemployment to be too low. The economy is built on the idea that some people at the bottom will be desperate enough to keep minimum wages low.

Zero unemployment would be bad because it would imply there’s no churn of people leaving one job for another. Back last year when unemployment was 3.5% most of that is people choosing to leave a job to find a new one.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#134

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

deegles wrote: post #112
lanevorockz wrote: post #59

Trying to break the conditioning here but government should always tax in a way that it incentive WORK. The way things are Wealth is no longer being produced, so those who have it will be on top because income will never be enough to prop you up. Therefore we should want a Growth market so that more wealth is produced and risk averse people will still be rich but more people will become as rich as them. To resolve In…

Why should everyone have to work? We are 100% capable of creating a society where everyone's basic needs are met with the automation and technology we have today. The idea that a person is only worth something if they work needs to be deeply reexamined.

While I agree with the overall sentiment, the idea that we are capable of creating a society where all basic needs are met entirely through automation is a pretty damned bold assertion.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#135

Post by deegles »

kebman wrote: post #119
deegles wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should everyone have to work? We are 100% capable of creating a society where everyone's basic needs are met with the automation and technology we have today. The idea that a person is only worth something if they work needs to be deeply reexamined.

Because if you cannot offer anything of value, someone else will offer that value on your behalf, making you an extraneous cost which anyone in their right mind would want to remove. And then you are but a slave to whomever you are useful to, meaning whoever controls you, and whoever has the power, and who grants you the means to get those basic needs. If someone is giving you bread for free, you can be sure it's bec…

> If someone is giving you bread for free, you can be sure it's because they don't want you to rebell.

There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person?

> That is why an economy must rely on the basis of voluntarily offering something of value. Because the alternative is literal enslavement.

You don't see the irony in saying that a person must volunteer their value or be enslaved?

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#136

Post by deegles »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #134
deegles wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should everyone have to work? We are 100% capable of creating a society where everyone's basic needs are met with the automation and technology we have today. The idea that a person is only worth something if they work needs to be deeply reexamined.

While I agree with the overall sentiment, the idea that we are capable of creating a society where all basic needs are met entirely through automation is a pretty damned bold assertion.

Fair. There's a lot we could do.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#137

Post by jtr1 »

baby wrote: post #127
jakozaur wrote: post #45

In almost all USA industries, there is increasing amount of consolidation. The top 4 companies' in almost any industry has a larger share of the total market: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2016/03/26/too-much-of-a-... Some consolidation is natural, but a huge part is caused by mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fulled by Private Equity. The M&A benefits the shareholders of participating companies at the expense of c…

Watching Super Size Me 2 you realize that the same thing happened to the chicken industry. It’s frightening. It’s like we have a democracy (so far) and under that a lot of smaller authoritarian organizations that are hard to notice or dismantle. Some of the farmers were basically slaves, in huge debts to these companies way of running things. Unbelievable.

This is an argument a lot of non-authoritarian socialists make: democracy only governs the few hours when people are not sleeping or at work, so a deeper, fuller democracy would include running workplaces democratically as well. Whether by employee-elected boards, cooperatives, democratically run unions (a necessary distinction), or some other form of collective control, that the consent of the governed is a question for all situations in which people find decisions about their lives being made.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#138

Post by [deleted] »

twic wrote: post #80
rmrfstar wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Summers is simply not credible. This is an "oh fuck things are about to get out of hand, let's try to insert ourselves into the debate so we don't get locked out" paper. Here is Larry Summers from his 1998 speech "The Challenges of Success". " The world looks very different than it did at the beginning of this decade, a time when America was said to be in decline. It is now clear that America will grow faster i…

I'm not hugely surprised that the OCR of the scan of the transcript of the speech says "intonation technology", but i'm mildly amused that both Stoller and you copy-and-pasted it without question.

[deleted]

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#139

Post by Super_Jambo »

ergothus wrote: post #39
Ididntdothis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that change can take decades or centuries and the end result may not be better or even worse.

I forget where I saw it, but I appreciate a comment that says: When faced with extreme inequality, you can redistribute wealth through taxation or you can redistribute poverty through revolution.

"by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty" - Will Durant

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#140

Post by Ididntdothis »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #139
ergothus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forget where I saw it, but I appreciate a comment that says: When faced with extreme inequality, you can redistribute wealth through taxation or you can redistribute poverty through revolution.

"by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty" - Will Durant

Traditionally the ruling class has voted against the first and hoped the second wouldn’t happen in their own lifetime.
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