Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:41 PM UTC

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.

Generalizations are always only somewhat true.

But what you're probably seeing is a reaction to the end of a period when, assuming at least a pulse and some vague familiarity with computers (and maybe some ability to navigate tech interviews), you could walk out of a job on Friday and have multiple offers within a week.

This was basically never the norm with most professional jobs that could take months of job-hunting with no guarantee of a higher salary or not needing to move. I was very lucky over time and it always depended on professional connections.

A lot of people got accustomed to a period that was nothing like the historical norm. I expect very few of them have taken fast food jobs which absolutely happened in 2001.

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

#132

Post by flakeoil » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:43 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #57

raizer88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it," - Jeff Bezos

That’s a pretty weird take to me. Crime stats and polling of people’s perception of crime show this as clearly the wrong approach for instance. Most studies show that no matter what direction crime is going in, a substantial majority of people think their neighborhoods are safer and that everywhere else is basically a war zone that is getting worse. There’s a total disconnect locally/nationally in perception that is…

It's probably related to how much or little we read about crime more than any true crime level. If we see 10 news articles everyday about crime, then we think there are a lot of crime around. If we read zero articles about crime, then it barely exists in our perception. What happens in reality does not affect our perception as much, as we probably seldomly see it for ourselves and when we see it, it would be difficult to objectively and statistically judge the crime level's direction with such few data points and biased experiences.

It's similar to Hans Rosling's comments about poverty in the 3rd world. It often sounds like poverty is increasing as time goes by, but if looking at statistics, overall poverty is decreasing and have been doing so for decades.

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

#133

Post by Der_Einzige » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #58

reaperman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The areas I might agree with this for construction would be something like lumbermills - where we have plenty of timber available but there’s a bottleneck of capital for mill capacity and they’ve been able to raise prices sharply in the past few years. Investors don’t want to pay to build enough capacity to bring prices down because then only older paid-off mills would win a pricing war if there were any excess capac…

Economic theory asserts that where there is profit to be made you will find entrants. So unless something stops entrants for mills (ie funding availability) we should anticipate economic profits to decrease.

Everyone knows that a good reimplementation of CUDA will make them trillions but despite 15 years, no one has made anything even close to it.

There’s profit to be made and no entrants. How can we explain this? If your answer is “AMD et al tried” you aren’t paying attention to just how pathetic and shallow their efforts have been and still are.

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

#134

Post by PartiallyTyped » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

detourdog wrote: post #119

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.

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.

I don't believe these changes can drive such an absurd increase in housing costs.

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

#135

Post by mistrial9 » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

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…

> by demographics and macro trends.

fully agree, and also taxation, access to credit and leverage for profitable assets, many legal loopholes..

Pickitty says in-part that rewards are disproportionately moving to capital assets, at the same time devaluing the fundamental components of life and liberty .. food stocks, common labor, political freedoms from taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty

Intuition says that increased surveillance by law enforcement to produce convictions that cost money and time are economically crippling to building a middle class from a labor pool and small-holder individuals. A people without hope and progress become mired in common failure and produce a downward spiral of personal life, as described.

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

#136

Post by llm_trw » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #104

llm_trw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crime stats and polling of people’s perception of crime show this as clearly the wrong approach for instance. The only crime stat you can trust is murder and that's because bodies can't be hidden (easily). Everything else gets swept under the rug. When I wanted to report my car broken into I was hung up on three times because of a poor quality line, which was fine before I told them what I was calling for. When I we…

But this hasn't changed over decades. Policing never was 100% effective and crime was always underreported. Yet if you ask people it's crime getting worse YoY.

It's getting worse.

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

#137

Post by jurassic » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:46 PM UTC

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.

A small percent of tech workers struggling to get a job doesn’t change the overall picture that most people working in tech are living relatively prosperous and comfortable lives. We are paid at a level that means we don’t feel stressed at the grocery store figuring out how to feed our kids or wonder how will we get to work when our cars break down. And as a bonus, we get to sit comfortably in air-conditioned rooms and spend a good chunk of our day thinking about things we actually take some enjoyment from.

None of this is true for the “underclass” mentioned above who have little to look forward to each day; the labor they provide is in various amounts boring/tedious/demeaning/physical, and doesn’t pay enough to give them the middle class lifestyle they feel entitled to (e.g. home ownership, healthcare, etc).

I and many people I know have gone through job searches over the last 18 months. Yes, it was more work than we’ve come to expect over the last 10 years. But ultimately everyone I know has landed on their feet. As an industry we are still incredibly privileged compared to most.

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

#138

Post by adampencev » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

Reading this as a European (Czechia) feels surreal. Every time a merger or an acquisition takes place, it has to get approved by the anti-monopoly bureau and it’s not uncommon they deny it or request some changes to the ownership structure.

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

#139

Post by marginalia_nu » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

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...

I don't know if it's being done as a joke or what, but this is the exact sort of myopic focus on a single economic variable that is being criticized as failing to capture economic reality.

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

#140

Post by pixl97 » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

nothercastle wrote: post #67

tomrod wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic theory asserts that where there is profit to be made you will find entrants. So unless something stops entrants for mills (ie funding availability) we should anticipate economic profits to decrease.

Eventually maybe but the Capitol investment is high and only a few firms are in the market place who are capable of playing. If they enter they expand they will decrease their own margins and that’s generally not desirable. Why take risks if you don’t have to and you can live out your tenure as ceo collect big bucks and Retire without any. Everyone wants to run their business slowly into the ground US steel and K-mar…

This here. We see this cycle quite often. Some economic crisis in a product hits and the price shoots up. Other entrants raise capital for the rather expensive factories required to make the product in its modern form. By the time the factories come on line, the entrenched interests fat with profits plunge prices very low and for some time driving out the new players and then you see prices rise back to higher levels and maintain that price.

It seems to many people don't realize it's not about making and selling the product. It's about the economic/money game. It's not about selling a car, it's about being a bank giving financing. It's not about selling a retail product, it's about credit cards. It's not about refining mined products, it's about controlling the willingness to invest in the sector.