Live data from Hacker News

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

voxeu.org

451–460 of 476 posts

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

#451
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what keeps corporations from becoming governments unto themselves?

The libertarian argument generally goes that competition will keep them all in check, but history has shown again and again how it doesn't work in the general case. If you want to see what small government/strong corporate control is like, look back a century in American history. Corporations controlled much more of American life than they do even now, and the 20th century regulatory state is all very much a direct r…

There's a way down the middle.

Unions.

Say a group of people unionized and formed a collective coop org.

Workers would get paid fairly who were employed by the co-op and would be members of the union.

The union would create it's own credit union and financial instruments and be a mesh of a CU and old style savings/loan.

The CU/Bank aspect would also invest in real estate (section 8 housing mostly and other but try to keep rents down wherever it has rentals and keep rent competition in check).

$$ brought in would be pooled, and as we grew to a certain size we'd launch our own health insurance company. All $$ from investments/real estate/etc would go towards the health care, premiums would basically be collective medical costs - income from investments / members of union, and members could choose to pay more for members w/ more financial burden.

Eventually we could start other businesses and encourage our union to ONLY use those businesses that we own as a co-op. ISPs, Amazon-clone, Google alternative, etc...

Eventually we gain $$ and power to start building or buying hospitals of our own. We also invest in our own generics drug company and maybe even a research company to design new drugs. Everything we do we deliver at cost or close medical wise. When we have surplus at the end of the year members vote whether we should diversify it into more investments, pay out dividends to all union members, or apply it to the medical fund, etc....

Eventually we could expand beyond our co-op and offer to be the 'benefit plan' for states' medicaid/medicare, as well as employer plans. The goal being have better quality and lower costs for employers, states, and members.

Eventually we get state $$ on top of union dues to cover the $$ needed for our m4a plan. If we're constantly in the green, we could start looking at a UBI plan.

The concept is a marriage of capitalism, unions, socialism, libertarianism. It's based on the concept of dual power. Eventually you get enough power that you weaken the healthcare lobbies (by taking their business) so that the $$ and political will to thwart you isn't there because they can no longer enrich politicians because they're cash on hand keeps dwindling, eventually we'd have more $ to lobby with than they would.

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The OP did not destroy the supporting evidence.

How so? The only supporting evidence provided was garbage collectors make more than teachers. The OP posted a link showing that's not true.

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Courts tend to take a dim view of well-monied people bullying the not-monied in courts Even if this is true in theory, it's so completely untrue from a practical perspective that it's pointless to debate.

> it's so completely untrue from a practical perspective Poor people successfully sue businesses ALL THE TIME. Besides, just last week a friend of mine told me that the former boss of one of his employees threatened a lawsuit over a non-compete agreement. He simply told the former boss "see ya in court and you'll be paying my legal bill". That was the end of that. Not only are most of these just bluster, it's not pro…

There's really no point in debating someone like you. No matter what I say you'll just quote some unverifiable anecdote and declare victory.

I'll leave you with some advice that helped me find my way out of libertarian ideology when I was younger.

Stop and think for a second. Why the "proper functions of government" just happen to line up exactly with the functions that directly benefit you.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And its growing ever more unavoidable in daily life for anyone trying to live. Pretty much everyone is becoming subject to these authoritarian regimes (corporate structures) as they invade and carve away at our democracy through financial influence, regulatory capture, etc.

I've been playing with the idea of equity cash lately. Something where the more money you've spent at a place, the more say you have in how it is run. Not really sure of what way that could be done, but the premise feels right so far.

See this post.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23414911

haha literally like tangentially above yours...

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telephone lines were almost always built following existing public roads or private railroads (that were built with government assistance and government land grants) even in the early days. There is no history of a successful, large scale infrastructure project built without government assistance. Either directly or due to the fact that much of it was built on government land. (unless maybe you consider some case whe…

An awful lot of railroads were built without government assistance. Of course, it was easier to build them if one got government financing. Even so, a railroad is private property and they can choose to allow or not someone stringing wires along it.

It goes way beyond government financing. The government gave them the damn land.

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

#456
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Democracy is not an efficient way of running a business Have any data to back that up? Comparing a democratically run corporation to the US government is a non sequitur. Outside VC there is no business model that will allow you to run at a loss for decades. So it's a scenario that's not even possible hypothetically. Somewhat anecdotal but there is a Worker Co-op in Spain, Mondragon, that's been a very competitive co…

Part of this is that VCs as you describe. It doesn't matter if a democratic social media company is more sustainable than Facebook when Facebook receives a half a billion dollars in VC funding to patch up its problems. Anecdotally, I hear that Ford's biggest problem right now is the union's resistance in adopting the Toyota production system. If I were a factory worker, I wouldn't want to change the way I do things j…

what if all workers were shareholders and the 'union' was a subsection of the company like an autonomous entity w/in the company that still had some voice but that ultimately was ALSO about their bottom line so that their shares go up as do the shares of all other employees?

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

#457
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is this contradictory? Firms that are monopolistic are less competitive, larger, and slower growing. Reducing monopolistic tendencies increases capital growth, competition, and reduces average firm size. This is well understood economics. Monopolies arent' some hypercompetitive ultra capitalist battlespace, they're fat and happy, and the most impactful teams they employ are lobbyists and policy folks in DC. Look…

Those attributes stem from them being a monopoly, they don't create it in the first place. He's questioning the implication that being less competitive and slower growing would allow you to obtain more of a monopoly.

The large, lumbering not-yet-a-monopoly has no method to increasing market share other than buying smaller competitors; thus leading to monopolization.

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

#458

No sane person should ever listen to Larry Summers again. This weasel looted America; even looted Russia with his pals at Harvard -anything he has to say that isn't a groveling apology for his life of treachery and destruction isn't worth listening to.

I'm unfamiliar with this scandal and am having trouble researching it on Google. Can you explain it in simple-ish terms (I'm weak on economics) and/or provide a source?

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

#459
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And its growing ever more unavoidable in daily life for anyone trying to live. Pretty much everyone is becoming subject to these authoritarian regimes (corporate structures) as they invade and carve away at our democracy through financial influence, regulatory capture, etc.

HOAs too. As if municipal codes and such aren’t enough for people.

I've heard HOAs called "4th level of government"

(fed / state / local / HOA)

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

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I genuinely am missing the point you are making. I agree that SS and medicare are large taxes for those making less than 100K. Are you saying that this is a reason we should not increase capital gains and should instead increase SS and MC?

I was pointing out that you would have to increase CG rates by a lot if you wanted them to be higher than OI rates (and you count SS and Medicare in the OI tax rate). If you do that, you would want to increase the rate on OI as well, otherwise people would play games because of the rate differential (take money out of a business as salary instead of CG, for example). And lurking in the background you have the timing/…

Thanks for clarification. People already play tons of games substituting CG for OI, so so bringing them closer to parity could reduce this.

I hadn’t considered the inflation issue, which is interesting but seems solvable.

Post reply on HN