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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

#341

Post by learc83 »

WalterBright wrote: post #281
jtr1 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'd love it if everyone could easily vote with their feet. I think there's more overlap between certain libertarian and socialist visions of the economy than most people realize. In our current system, there's a lot of factors that prevent people from voting with their feet: healthcare, location, switching costs, and availability of jobs being chief among them, but also newer phenomena like non-compete co…

Non-compete contracts tend to be unenforceable.

They tend to be unenforceable in California, they certainly aren't unenforceable in other states.

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

#342

Post by ergothus »

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

Thank you! Hopefully I'll be able to property quote and cite next time now that I know.

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

#343

Post by jjoonathan »

WalterBright wrote: post #337
jjoonathan wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government is the tool used to suppress competition. Oh? Network effects don't exist? Economies of scale don't exist? Dumping doesn't exist? Branding doesn't exist? The only kind of moat in existence is regulatory capture? Regulatory capture is real, but it's one of many tools that suppress competition. I can think of one single solitary competitive analysis I've been party to where we decided it was the larges…

> only I didn't say "only".

You didn't call the government "a tool" used to suppress competition, you called it "the tool" used to suppress competition.

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

#344

Post by megaman821 »

zby wrote: post #271
zorked wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit like saying "Here we are in 1650 under an absolute monarchy. The people are the majority, they could topple our illegitimate hereditary government and make it a democracy, but they haven't done it yet because they certainly prefer things this way".

I don't know - there are cooperatives - it is not like you need to risk your life to work at one. Somehow they are not that popular. There are also partnerships - which are kind of close to cooperatives, when they employ only the partners and for example outsource office cleaning and stuff. In some industries they do pretty well - for example in law. Why cooperatives do poorly? Maybe people usually are not very good…

> Why cooperatives do poorly?

I have seen economist claim that cooperatives tend to be pretty inflexible. Slack was a communication tool for what is now a failed gaming company. If the company was owned by game developers, artists, and story writers, how many of them would have voted to sack themselves and pursue a chat application?

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

#345

Post by WalterBright »

devalgo wrote: post #321
WalterBright wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often hear people complain about others making money in the stock market, so I suggest they invest in stocks, too. They respond saying it's too risky.

>They respond saying it's too risky Well it literally is. If they are talking about Wall St. bankers they have no way to replicate the results of those people. Wall Street can make poorly thought out multi-trillion dollar bets on housing bonds and when they go bust they get bailed out and still get their Christmas Bonuses. There is no similar mechanism to protect a non-institutional investor from similar levels of ri…

There are plenty of stocks besides mortgage derivatives, and plenty of ordinary people making money off of stocks.

If you want to sit on the sidelines because it's too risky for you, that's fine. But don't then complain that others make money on stocks.

You, and anyone else, can buy FAANG stocks, index funds, or whatever.

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

#346

Post by learc83 »

gnicholas wrote: post #338
willcipriano wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is widely cited as the reason that teachers earn less than other professions, and why garbage collectors earn more. Looks like the median pay for garbage collectors is $37,840[0] and for teachers it is $59,420[1] [0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes537081.htm [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/mobil...

Is there any required credentialing for for garbage collectors? Teachers need to have a bachelors degree and a teaching credential, in most cases.

That's true but the OP just destroyed the only supporting evidence you provided for your point. It might be that teacher's salaries would be below $37k if it didn't require credentialing, but that's not the case, so it's not evidence.

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

#347

Post by WalterBright »

learc83 wrote: post #341
WalterBright wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-compete contracts tend to be unenforceable.

They tend to be unenforceable in California, they certainly aren't unenforceable in other states.

Yeah, they are unenforceable in other states, and in all of them if they are determined to be unreasonable in court.

https://www.legalnature.com/guides/are-non-compete-agreement...

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

#348

Post by _2d30 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #325
_2d30 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then if you want to help people build wealth that don’t have it, you make it much harder. I really feel like people need to look into land taxes a la Henry George: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George Taxing things like capital gains differently or implementing a generic wealth tax can actually hurt those we want to help to build wealth as well as incentivize things like expatriation of wealth. Can’t expatr…

Why not all? Tax land, capital gains, and wealth. Adjust brackets prudently.

Why should we disincentivize saving? It's clear why we should tax land, the value of land is not driven in almost any way by ownership of land so the returns to land are unjustly gained AND it's economically efficient to tax land as it's fixed in supply. However, taxing savings (capital gains, wealth) is unclear in value. What would, for example, be the benefit of shifting investment to consumption? In other news, I could be highly in favor of a consumption tax instead but again, that's very difficult to implement well.

A hefty estate tax is something I can get behind. It's definitely distortionary and has a huge amount of difficulty in implementation but I see almost no societal value to generational wealth.

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

#349

Post by gpanders »

Signez wrote: post #79
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…

> To resolve inequality we can't just have the mindset of punish the rich for creating wealth. I would argue that millions (if not billions) are injected into corr^Wlobbying to make sure that we never fully have this mindset, indeed. Meanwhile, the rich are way less taxed (proportionally) than the middle class, and in my opinion, that's a problem that stifle Western economies.

> Meanwhile, the rich are way less taxed (proportionally) than the middle class, and in my opinion, that's a problem that stifle Western economies.

Is this actually true? According to the IRS, in 2018 the top 10% of income earners paid 69.47% of total income tax collected.

Source: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

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

#350

Post by Apocryphon »

Aunche wrote: post #329
clarry wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers are incentivized to choose themselves over the health of the company or the customer. And maybe that is how it should be? Maybe life shouldn't be about the most efficient way to run a business.

If Earth was government by one big country, you'd have solid point, but most Americans would prefer that the next trillion dollar companies not all be based in India and China. Also, what's best for the workers isn't necessarily what is best for society. Globalization is anti-worker, but it helps the consumer with cheaper prices, the company with extra profits, and developing countries afford what developed countries…

The parent comment is making a universal statement, and so it would hypothetically apply to companies everywhere, including in India and China. Perhaps then there would be a world without trillion dollar companies, or maybe the workers can figure out a way. The Mondragon Corporation is a tens-of-billions-dollar workers cooperative [0], for instance.

This line of discussion is also making the assumption that what's best of workers and what's best for companies are necessarily in conflict, which is rather silly given that if a company goes under, the workers themselves are in trouble. There is at least one example I can point to where a workers union forced management to recognize the need to be more economically competitive. [1] Also, it makes the assumption that management and/or shareholders necessarily know best for a company's future, and there is no shortage of evidence to the contrary, some even recent. [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23380445

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21887425

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