Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

No? You’re thinking of a specific class of models. Generally speaking, prescriptive economics is about characterising what an efficient market would look like and then identifying why reality is not that. (And whether that deviance is good or bad.)

This article could be seen doing that. It seems like domains should be closed to $2, given an efficient market. But they’re nine going on twelve.

* Manufacturers reducing product quality without buyers' knowledge. E.g., Pyrex or some SSD makers.

* Shrinkflation: grocery stores selling slightly smaller-sized packages without buyers' knowledge. E.g., containers that used to be square, staying equally wide (for shelf space facing) but less deep.

* Widespread Terms and Conditions / EULAs that undermine previously reliable consumer protections.

* The sense that privacy-preserving products are now out of my financial reach, due to surveillance capitalism.

I guess the main pattern in these things is a sense of failed consumer protections.

EDIT: I'm ranting about consumer sentiment, which is probably different from economic sentiment. Apologies for going off topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Capitalism

> "...private decisions could and presumably would lead to the unhampered exploitation of the public, or of workers, farmers and others who are intrinsically weak as individuals. Such decisions would be a proper object of state interference or would soon so become."

Economists like Michael Hudson (I'm a fan) repeatedly refer to the rentier class in this context, and a rentier system (wiki) can be described as one in which

> "productive investments are largely lacking, the highest possible share of income is skimmed off from ground-rents, leases and rents and thus in many developing countries, rentier capitalism is an obstacle to economic development. A rentier is someone who earns income from capital without working. (wiki)"

Note that if you take capital and use it in a different way, e.g. to build a factory in which you are actively involved in design and production, you are not a rentier, but rather an industrial capitalist (I think we can safely put Elon Musk in this category, and Warren Buffett in the rentier group, for example). For more on this notion:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/dilemmas-of-the-rentier-class

There are several policies which undermine the power of the rentier class - antitrust in competetive industries is one, but equally important is the nationalization and state control of fundamental sectors that are non-competitive and thus fall under the natural monopoly heading - water, roads, ports, electrical grids, fiber optic networks, basic public health care and education, emergency services, etc. - basically the infrastructure that makes all other economic activity possible, and which the likes of Buffett - a noted utility investor - have had their fat fingers in for many decades.

China has incorporated these concepts into its state capitalism model and that's why it is outperforming the USA and Europe when it comes to technological and economic development in almost all sectors, from solar panels to high speed rail to water projects, and now, chips. They're still behind in space tech, but that's really only due to the phenomenon of SpaceX.

Some other examples that the author didn't cover:

Payment processors: VISA/ Mastercard have near monopoly over transaction fees

Digital Ads: Google & Facebook are the Economic Termites in that space.

Cloud Service Providers: The ET's here are AWS and Azure!

Text book publishers: Prices always ever go up as the publishers control the market tightly.