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Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

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Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#111

Post by lupire »

apsec112 wrote: post #101
Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

Since 2016, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have risen quickly for people in the bottom quartile, while for upper-income workers they've been stagnant. Obviously, most people on HN are still better off than manual laborers, but the gap has narrowed substantially (a big reversal from 1995-2015) and that's a good thing. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

That graph shows beginning of a recovery from large wage decreased of the last few years. Equality is nice, but the main story is that everyone is doing worse.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#112

Post by SI_Rob »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #106
silverquiet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with much of this and I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. One of the biggest "innovations" in the US in the last decade or so seems to be to add as many hidden fees as possible to every service imaginable. Obviously it's hardly a new idea; I'm sure that human nature being what it is, they had to deal with it in Mesopotamia. But it makes budgeting very difficult; I suppose it's like living i…

This seems to be rooted in a generalized problem which I'll hastily call the conscious abuse of polite understanding, or abuse of economic consensus. Another possible rubric for this, a bit more sensationalized, would be "destructive precision". A simple example would be the hollowing-out of conventional terms everyone believes they hold the same settled definition of, such as "a flight." Instead of transacting accor…

So, a pricing exploit based on arbitrage between the rigorous description (and enforcement) of payment for a service in one direction, and the comparatively un-policed description of the service delivered, in the other? Perhaps the lawyering class wants everyone to either suffer under their miserable penchant for overweening semantic nitpicking, or suffer it along with them.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#113

Post by tinnet »

dindobre wrote: post #105

I feel like the gist of this could have been "rent seekers bad", something I'd strongly agree with. A non-trivial part of society is checked out of real work and milking others dry because of existing conditions or acquired leverage.

I agree. It seems like an effort to criticize issues of late stage capitalism without sounding like a socialist.

There’s also strong overlaps with Varoufakis’ “Technofeudalism”, I.e. construction companies living in autodesks fiefdom.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#114

Post by gruez »

pydry wrote: post #80
patrickmay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing costs are primarily due to zoning and other local and state government policies that limit or prohibit construction.

Housing went up globally because of local policies all across the world all at the same time, huh? Perhaps housing went up because of a global increase in wealth inequality.

>Housing went up globally because of local policies all across the world all at the same time, huh?

1. source for "Housing went up globally"?

2. You don't really need every jurisdiction to by NIMBY for global house prices to go up. For instance if half the world is NIMBY and the other half is "meh", and housing prices in the NIMBY half went up 50% while the other half stayed the same, you'd still observe that "Housing went up globally".

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#115

Post by nequo »

Spooky23 wrote: post #86
spicyusername wrote: post #6

I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

> There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass.

> The former is doing great.

This is at odds with what I've been hearing on HN and in adjacent places. For a year or two now, people have been saying that finding a job in tech has become much harder. Some say that it hasn't been this bad in a decade. Some say it hasn't been this bad since the dotcom bubble burst.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#116

Post by pixl97 »

estebank wrote: post #95
izacus wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the exact same mistake as the poster you're answering to warns about - you're mixing the objective reality ("absolute crime numbers") to percieved reality of population. If the population percieves themselves unsafe and unhappy, your numbers don't really mean much to them because to restore happy society you need to look at *perception* and fix the reasoning behind it. Making the crime stats number go d…

> you need to look at perception and fix the reasoning behind it. Many times that perception is shaped by the media we consume, which has no obligation to have any connection to the reality on the ground. At that point whatever is done to improve the reality doesn't have to have any impact on people's perception.

I don't really watch any broadcast/cable news these days. Was at a restaurant that had it going on their TV and my goodness all it was saying is "FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR". Absolute mind rotting garbage.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#117

Post by gruez »

citizenpaul wrote: post #100
GiorgioG wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dispute the charge with your bank - you did not get what you paid for, and it's not on you to chase them down and waste your time. If/when enough people do this, they'll get their shit together.

This is basically a variation on tragedy of the commons. The solution is right there in front of everyone and "simply" requires everyone to do it coordinately. I've told this solution to numerous people, just log onto your bank website and click "dispute" and thats it you are done. Nope, they either don't believe me or are afraid of doing it because "banks". They continue to just allow crappy businesses to effectivel…

>I've told this solution to numerous people, just log onto your bank website and click "dispute" and thats it you are done

This depends heavily on your bank. I can see this working if you're using a neobank, but there's plenty of legacy banks that require you to call in, wait on hold, etc.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#118

Post by api »

nequo wrote: post #115
Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

> There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. > The former is doing great. This is at odds with what I've been hearing on HN and in adjacent places. For a year or two now, people have been saying that finding a job in tech has become much harder. Some say that it hasn't been this bad in a decade. Some say it hasn't been this bad since the dotcom bubble burst.

It’s harder than it was a few years ago to find a six figure upwardly mobile job.

This is a different world from the one where hundreds of thousands are committing suicide with fentanyl.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#119

Post by detourdog »

patrickmay wrote: post #44
throwaway63467 wrote: post #21

I think in many areas the name of the game is to move the entire market to a place where no real competition is possible. Housing in most parts of the world is a good example, there’s no reason prices for housing should’ve gone up 300-400 % above inflation as we really haven’t run out of space in most places, yet here we are. I have a hard time believing this is just the outcome of unfortunate market conditions, it s…

Housing costs are primarily due to zoning and other local and state government policies that limit or prohibit construction.

Those aren’t invalid things to drive a markets costs. I would say modern building codes that are used to ensure safety standards and accessibility are true drivers of cost. Achieving new standards without a cost increase is unrealistic. Older higher quality doors need to be replaced with inferior quality doors that have UL stickers.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#120

Post by greesil »

spicyusername wrote: post #6

I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…

Ezra Klein just had a very relevant podcast on this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

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