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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

#161

Post by jtolmar »

sokoloff wrote: post #84
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…

What is PE fueled by? IMO, in large part by zero interest rate policies.

It's just a natural product of capitalism[1]. When you can buy a chunk of a business and own that chunk of its profits, you can use those profits to buy a larger chunk of the business, repeat ad nauseum, until you have so much money that your needs for more profit aren't satisfied by any one business, but you have enough money to perform multi-business maneuvers. Higher interest rates might make some of these maneuvers less possible in the short term, but that would just delay the problem until the wealthiest capital-owners accumulate enough money that they can put forth more collateral to get better loans.

[1] By capitalism I mean private ownership specifically, not the usual HN definition of something something markets something something competition.

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

#162

Post by sudosysgen »

julienfr112 wrote: post #152
yogthos wrote: post #130

Marx literally wrote about this in Das Kapital over a 100 years ago laying out the mechanisms of capitalist consolidation: The splitting-up of the total social capital into many individual capitals or the repulsion of its fractions from one another, is counteracted by their attraction. This last does not mean that simple concentration of the means of production and of the command over labour, which is identical with…

Well, Marx predicted that : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit... . The exact opposite of what we are looking at.

Except that the rate of profit has fallen and is falling, with small fluctuations year over year.

It is possible for monopoly and industry power to crush worker power, while the rate of profit increases. In fact, this is exactly what he predicted.

The mechanism for this to happen is simply accumulation of capital.

Another reality is that the profits of many industries such as the financial industries are not predicted to fall according to Marx, only that of commodity-producing industries. An absolutely huge part of modern profits is not profits according to the definition used at the time, and not realizable or even intangible. If you look at the rate of profit in commodity-producing industries, you will find that it is exceedingly thin in a great many cases, and that often profit is only realized via financial instruments (for example, the sale of new cars).

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

#163

Post by amaajemyfren »

I am not an economist. Compared with the hard sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics) economics is still quite new and I suspect there would be more people seeing these trends and offer other models trying to explain them.

From a libertarian acquaintance the root cause is clear. Going off the Gold standard[1] in the US. I am not completely convinced.

[1] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

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

#164

Post by rmrfstar »

jimbokun wrote: post #151
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…

What did he get wrong in the excerpt you quoted?

There is a lot to unpack, but here is one example.

He holds out AIG as a world-leader to be emulated.

In the same year he gave that talk, he attacked CFTC chair Brooksley Born when she proposed margin rules for OTC swaps. She made this proposal in the aftermath of the LTCM collapse. Summers/Greenspan/Rubin said that banks were so "sophisticated" that they didn't need margin rules, and that these rules would somehow cause a financial crisis.

Ten years later, AIG almost collapsed because it had a division making massive directional bets on credit markets using un-margined swaps. Were it not for a $200bn loan from the public, AIG would have collapsed.

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

#165

Post by jtolmar »

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…

> making you an extraneous cost which anyone in their right mind would want to remove

Wanting to remove people for being "extraneous costs" is not right-minded. It is extreme sociopathy.

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

#166

Post by dangus »

technotony wrote: post #158
jtr1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This comes up a lot, nobody is literally chained to their desks. Democracy in the workplace comes from voting with your feet and taking another job at another company. It's not perfect, particularly for lower income people, but it's also not slavery and generally the arc of worker rights is improving through time. You could make a case that some of the current anger in the united states is because COVID's destruction…

It is far beyond imperfect.

Let’s say I work at Kroger. I don’t like the way I’m treated, so I quit.

Now the remaining grocery stores I can work for owned by Albertsons or Amazon. What kind of choice is that?

Pick any other industry and you’re likely to find similar problems.

It would be really interesting to see what mandatory democratic corporate governance might look like.

Or, perhaps, fixing union regulations so that unions don’t have a bunch of downsides for the employee or other regulatory issues that seem to have directly led to their decline.

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

#167

Post by rcoder »

technotony wrote: post #158
jtr1 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This comes up a lot, nobody is literally chained to their desks. Democracy in the workplace comes from voting with your feet and taking another job at another company. It's not perfect, particularly for lower income people, but it's also not slavery and generally the arc of worker rights is improving through time. You could make a case that some of the current anger in the united states is because COVID's destruction…

> It's not perfect, particularly for lower income people...

I don't think many minimum-wage retail or service workers can just "vote with their feet" and easily get another job, especially if you don't consider major changes in location and hours to be a non-starter.

For folks with kids, or who depend on public transit to get to work, "up and moving" isn't really an option. If you're one missed paycheck away from eviction, bankruptcy, or arrest due to missed fines or court fees then you can't play "hardball" with your employer.

Saying the arc of history improves overall cruelly glosses over the reality today for millions of Americans.

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

#168

Post by markus_zhang »

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…

You can't solve the problem in conventional ways because rich people as well as large funds and corporations control legislation. You can vote 100 tines and be guaranteed that the outcome won't be different in that perspective.

I'm not sure if ycombinators like the alternative way.

BTW I agree to your idea in general, just want to say that I'd substitute WORK with anything that benefits human being.

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

#169

Post by kebman »

jtolmar wrote: post #165
kebman wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> making you an extraneous cost which anyone in their right mind would want to remove Wanting to remove people for being "extraneous costs" is not right-minded. It is extreme sociopathy.

You are completely correct, Sir. This is why we must avoid organizing our states in ways that create such dependencies at all cost, and instead strive to create states that create voluntary sharing of resources and values that are mutually beneficial. That is the only way progress can be made, and freedom can be insured.

On the other hand, if you were a baker, and someone told you that you must give your bread away for free to a third party, how would you feel about that? The only thing you would get in return, is not being punished by the one forcing you to work, and not killed by the masses for whom you provide your free bread. I don't know about you, but personally I'd hate to live under such a fascist regime.

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

#170

Post by strbean »

kebman wrote: post #153
deegles wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> There's no other reason you could think of to feed a hungry person? Free individuals might give something out of benevolence. But a state institution is not a free individual. It can only represent the collective, and you cannot ensure that all individuals in such a collective would agree to such an exchange, or feel benevolent about it. As such, there is no such thing as a benevolent state. Instead, you can employ…

> It can only represent the collective, and you cannot ensure that all individuals in such a collective would agree to such an exchange, or feel benevolent about it. As such, there is no such thing as a benevolent state.

A state is only benevolent if every single citizen is benevolent? That seems like a pointless assertion.

In a democracy, in theory, the majority is what matters.

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