Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

thebignewsletter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 457 posts

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

#141

Post by Spooky23 »

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...

Wages are tough in this segment because many households are dependent on external non-income benefits. Particularly Medicaid and particularly for children.

So if your $16/hr job pops by 30%, the net impact on the household is much lower in many cases. For teen workers, it’s beer money. For single moms, it’s a net loss as costs for daycare and healthcare have increased 50%.

All of this stuff is relative. I’m a tech exec in a large organization, and essentially live the same lifestyle as my parents, who were in “lower end” jobs relatively speaking in the 80s when I was little.

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

#142

Post by TSP00N3 »

chaorace wrote: post #107
phkahler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom. They all learn the prisoners dilemma as an example because it's how you need to think to avoid overt collusion. I'd like an economic model as powerful as the laws of thermodynamics,…

> Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom You've more-or-less verbatim described the impetus behind the modern development of behavioral economics. That older sort of classical theory which you describe -- the one which frames the world in terms of "rational economic agents" -- ha…

Good read (or in my case listen on Audible) on behavioral economics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misbehaving:_The_Making_of_B...

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

#143

Post by Der_Einzige »

GiorgioG wrote: post #68
teeray wrote: post #48

My most recent instance of this is online ordering with Dunkin’ Donuts. The app has no feedback to indicate what items are in stock, so it’s possible to order things that can’t be fulfilled. If you don’t want their substitute, the store cannot cancel the order. You have to call an 800 number and plead your case. Sure, it’s not a huge hardship, but it’s another instance of making the cancellation path more difficult t…

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.

You know that companies will eventually wise up and start taking you to small claims court for trying to do this small time subversiveness. AI will make stuff like this possible, and individualized resistance like this can and will be snuffed out once and for all.

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

#144

Post by gruez »

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…

>I think this goes the other way around. Our method for understanding the economy is flawed and is not properly capturing what all consumers know intuitively, things kind of suck, even when you have a job and even when you're still buying things.

It seems kind of lazy to observe that anecdotes contradict statistics, and then conclude that it's the statistics are wrong without providing any empirical evidence to the contrary. This style of argumentation basically allows you to make whatever "intuitive" claim you want and handwave any empirical evidence to the contrary because the empirical evidence isn't "capturing what [we] all know intuitively".

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

#146

Post by uoaei »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #126
apsec112 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 keep telling everyone I know about this and literally zero people believe me! So done with Americans finally getting into boom times and still feeling like it’s 2008. No one here ever wants to admit that they have it good.

You are literally the person the article is about.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by ghaff »

chaorace wrote: post #107
phkahler wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom. They all learn the prisoners dilemma as an example because it's how you need to think to avoid overt collusion. I'd like an economic model as powerful as the laws of thermodynamics,…

> Economic "models" make assumptions like markets being efficient. Meanwhile in the business classes next door they teach how to avoid competition because it's a race to the bottom You've more-or-less verbatim described the impetus behind the modern development of behavioral economics. That older sort of classical theory which you describe -- the one which frames the world in terms of "rational economic agents" -- ha…

Somewhat. Some of the science behind behavioral economics relates to the fact that there are actually rationales behind certain preferences that aren't strictly about expected value. The utility of money is not a linear function. Etc.

People also don't understand statistics well as a whole, to be sure. But behavioral economics is also not purely about people being irrational.

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

#149

Post by uoaei »

flakeoil wrote: post #132
Forgeties79 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 difficul…

Exactly, in the case of crime there are so many more vicarious anecdotes. If people were only allowed to discuss crimes that they were personally victim to, we would not be under the impression that crime is worse than ever.

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

#150

Post by uoaei »

citizen_friend wrote: post #36
ponector wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is simple. Some consumers are feeling terrible and they are vocal about it. People mostly are ok and not talking about it.

Alternative theory: the metrics don’t describe our full economic experience.

That's literally the point of the article.
Post reply on HN