131–140 of 160 posts
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I would struggle to define sub 5% profit margin retailers and wholesalers as overfed.
Poor starving Target investors with their stock being up 180% from 5 years ago
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Not all monopolies are natural. Those powerful enough to capture regulators are now a defacto government. The answer is not less regulation, it's a different kind to stop and reverse the consolidation of power. And benevolent monopolies can and do change over time.
> Not all monopolies are natural Did you read my first paragraph?
To be more explicit, I wouldn't agree it's most often the government making monopolies. There are plenty of cases where government regulators are captured by 'natural' monopolists (or otherwise large players) who then entrench themselves with regulatory moats, serving only their interests.
And even government made monopolies aren't _well_ regulated IMO, for example telcos. A freer market would need controls to prevent consolidation from locking in customers by simply buying up all the spectrum and lobbyists.
Sometimes I wonder if 'monopoly' in the US has become a no true Scotsman fallacy. The threshold of direct consumer harm is either so high or evidence requirements so onerous it's as if there is no more Sherman Antitrust Act. The monopolizing doesn't even have to be in a computer or layers of shell companies anymore.
The passivity against monopolies has more to do with international competition and the fear of losing world domination.
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What you posted is certainly the prevailing modern opinion. Looking a bit deeper, though: 1. if wealth comes from owning property, why weren't the indigenous people wealthy? 2. In South America, the indigenous people were pushed off their land, too. Why did South America remain poor up to the present? 3. How did Japan become such an incredible economic power despite having little land and no natural resources? 4. The…
Point one made me hesitant but when I got to point five until I realized this was just propaganda. Property might not be 100% of what causes wealth cause you know, gotta mix capital with labor, but are you really arguing that America didn’t benefit off the stolen wealth of other nations? Is all the land that was taken from them valued at 0?
Land by itself does nothing. Japan proved that land is not a crucial factor.
Bill Gates' wealth didn't come from land.
> mix capital with labor
This is also not necessarily true. Slavery was certainly applied, but the wealth created thereby was minimal.
The common factor with wealth creation is free markets. None of the other factors you mentioned.
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Are most monopolies not of government creation? Anything that has increasingly onerous regulations or other government requirements are the sorts of monopolies that need breaking. Any natural monopolies formed by just being really good at something and offering it at a low price are a waste of taxpayer money to try and disrupt.
Precisely. The regulatory environment in the US is astounding. People yell at Apple for being a monopoly but android exists and the consumers just don’t care. Amazon tried to launch a line of phones and no one cared. If things were really so oppressive the consumers would demand something else but they just don’t care.
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Zuckerberg has more resources than me. Not letting me get together with other people helps Zuckerberg. As far as the NYT goes, feel free to argue against the 1st Amendment. CU just says that the NYT isn't special, that the 1st applies to using tools, not organizations who have named themselves after said tools. Govt regulation always favors the well-heeled.
> Zuckerberg has more resources than me. Yes but there is are rules & caps for political contributions: https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate... I'm not arguing against 1st, I'm arguing that a business (not a person) has speech or a 1st right (which people absolutely do), and that the net result of acting like they do is really hurting the citizens of America.
Why should people who get together to do political speech be treated any differently?
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Point one made me hesitant but when I got to point five until I realized this was just propaganda. Property might not be 100% of what causes wealth cause you know, gotta mix capital with labor, but are you really arguing that America didn’t benefit off the stolen wealth of other nations? Is all the land that was taken from them valued at 0?
> are you really arguing that America didn’t benefit off the stolen wealth of other nations? Land by itself does nothing. Japan proved that land is not a crucial factor. Bill Gates' wealth didn't come from land. > mix capital with labor This is also not necessarily true. Slavery was certainly applied, but the wealth created thereby was minimal. The common factor with wealth creation is free markets. None of the other…
Can you show me a single successful enterprise that does not require any land?
> This is also not necessarily true. Slavery was certainly applied, but the wealth created thereby was minimal.
> The common factor with wealth creation is free markets. None of the other factors you mentioned.
Jesus Christ guy, I’ve seen free market bootlickers before but this is a new, amazing level. Next are you going to tell us how the free market was so amazing before that rapscallion FDR came in and ruined the masterpiece of the free market that was the Great Depression? Or does the result of one of the most laissez-faire economic system a of all time not count because it ended bad?
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> are you really arguing that America didn’t benefit off the stolen wealth of other nations? Land by itself does nothing. Japan proved that land is not a crucial factor. Bill Gates' wealth didn't come from land. > mix capital with labor This is also not necessarily true. Slavery was certainly applied, but the wealth created thereby was minimal. The common factor with wealth creation is free markets. None of the other…
> Land by itself does nothing. Japan proved that land is not a crucial factor. Can you show me a single successful enterprise that does not require any land? > This is also not necessarily true. Slavery was certainly applied, but the wealth created thereby was minimal. > The common factor with wealth creation is free markets. None of the other factors you mentioned. Jesus Christ guy, I’ve seen free market bootlickers…
Businesses often rent office space. Microsoft got its start from a rented building. As I mentioned before, Japan became a world economic power with very little land. South Korea is another example. South America has plenty of land, and is mired in poverty.
> Next are you going to tell us how the free market was so amazing before that rapscallion FDR came in and ruined the masterpiece of the free market that was the Great Depression?
WW1 showed that the free market had turned a nation of poor immigrants into a super power. The doughboys arrived taller than the Europeans, and far better equipped and fed.
The Great Depression was caused by the creation of the Fed in 1914. The Fed proceeded to the inflate the dollar, while keeping a fixed exchange rate with gold. The disparity led to what always happens with pegged currencies - collapse. The depression was deepened and lengthened by FDR not understanding what was going on.
> bootlickers
I suspect you've never heard the case for the free market before. It isn't taught in school or in college. Which is sad, because the schools graduate students into a market economy with little idea of how it works. For example, I saw some 12th grade history materials a few years ago that asserted that the middle class did not exist in the US before FDR. This is the nonsense taught in schools.
> amazing
Yes, it is amazing. The evidence is right in front of us. Feel free to refute the evidence I presented that free markets are the common thread in prosperity, not land nor slaves nor socialism.
If you want some more, look at the historical statistics of height in the US. It went up all through the 19th century, up to WW2 where it leveled out. That's pretty good objective evidence of growing prosperity. Remember that the US was peopled by immigrants who arrived with nothing.
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> Land by itself does nothing. Japan proved that land is not a crucial factor. Can you show me a single successful enterprise that does not require any land? > This is also not necessarily true. Slavery was certainly applied, but the wealth created thereby was minimal. > The common factor with wealth creation is free markets. None of the other factors you mentioned. Jesus Christ guy, I’ve seen free market bootlickers…
> Can you show me a single successful enterprise that does not require any land? Businesses often rent office space. Microsoft got its start from a rented building. As I mentioned before, Japan became a world economic power with very little land. South Korea is another example. South America has plenty of land, and is mired in poverty. > Next are you going to tell us how the free market was so amazing before that rap…
> Businesses often rent office space. Microsoft got its start from a rented building. As I mentioned before, Japan became a world economic power with very little land. South Korea is another example. South America has plenty of land, and is mired in poverty.
Just to be clear, I am taking that as no, you cannot show a single successful enterprise that does not require land. Redefining renting land as not requiring land does not pass any sort of logical muster.
As for the rest of your comments, I'm not going to engage with your Gish Gallop when you cant even pretend to deal with the very first point. It's obvious you have an opinion and you are going to work your way backwards to any argument that supports your conclusion
Edit: Oh god, I was just going through other comments I had this week and realized you are the guy who was arguing that seatbelts are dangerous and shouldn't be required. I legitimately think you might be having a schizophrenic breakdown and you should seek therapy.
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> Can you show me a single successful enterprise that does not require any land? Businesses often rent office space. Microsoft got its start from a rented building. As I mentioned before, Japan became a world economic power with very little land. South Korea is another example. South America has plenty of land, and is mired in poverty. > Next are you going to tell us how the free market was so amazing before that rap…
>> Can you show me a single successful enterprise that does not require any land? > Businesses often rent office space. Microsoft got its start from a rented building. As I mentioned before, Japan became a world economic power with very little land. South Korea is another example. South America has plenty of land, and is mired in poverty. Just to be clear, I am taking that as no, you cannot show a single successful e…
You're engaging in reductio ad absurdum, because the space every person occupies is required for them to exist. Your argument is simply silly. A land-based business would be one that farms or mines or puts a racetrack on the land. Two businesses can be contained in offices right next to each other, and one goes bust and the other gets rich. The office is irrelevant.
> you are the guy who was arguing that seatbelts are dangerous and shouldn't be required.
That's a gross misrepresentation of what I argued. You got that one so wrong, perhaps you should try carefully reading my posts again in this thread.
> I legitimately think you might be having a schizophrenic breakdown and you should seek therapy.
Insulting others is not a convincing argument.