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Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

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181–190 of 457 posts

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

#181

I do wonder if a better antitrust strategy would be to pursue a portfolio of actions against second- or third-tier companies like this; the current strategy of going up against Meta, Google, Apple is sound in terms of raw size of antitrust abuses going on, but they remain some of the most popular brands in the US and so it’s often hard to show consumer harm. As a counterpoint, I suspect building momentum by actually…

The FTC is doing that too all the time now. For obvious reasons they don't draw the same headlines.

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

#182

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…

> economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality

Which is funny, because as economist, half of the material is "these metric don't matter, if there's no benefit for the population, but you can't ignore them either". It can be summarized as something like "economic indicators are not perfect measures of general well-being, but you need the indicators to look good to be able to distribute well-being".

The thing is, that the public doesn't get that _nuance_. Good economist know that a growing GPD doesn't mean that everyone is feeling good, but also knows that a shrinking one means that most will fell bad.

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

#183
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I have to spend 10 minutes finding a store employee to unlock a case for me to buy underwear and socks at Target when I didn't have to five years ago, I conclude that crime has gotten worse.

When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he touches them, it is perfectly valid to assume that crime is worse.

When the police do nothing to enforce the law I do not trust the statistics because they are based on reports to the police.

Maybe the statistics are right, over the whole city, but where I live, crime has gotten worse.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that economics is a credible science, but you’re conflating talking heads with economists. Talking heads exist to peddle the agenda of the elites who own them.

who do you think economists also listen to?

I hope they listen to data. Either that they gather themselves or gathered by reputable organizations. Consumer confidence index for example tries to gather the sentiment of the consumers.

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

#185
post #99

Whatever happened to "your margin is my opportunity"?

Anti-competitive pricing.

This shouldn't really be confusing this is first hour first day stuff if you study how and why monopolies exist and can persist.

Here's an instant example. Let's say I own every single gas station in your city, a thousand of them or so, and I charge 100% gross margins on gasoline. I do hundreds of millions of dollars in business.

You want to open a gas station with lower margins and undercut me. You pick a good location and open it.

Great, my location across the street can just sell below your cost unit you run out of money. Bye, see you later. Was that in your business plan? Where'd you get all that capital? What kind of return were they expecting, and how will you deliver it selling below cost for an indefinitely long period of time?

Also where are you sourcing your gas? Maybe I have already locked up all the current deliveries given my buying power with the refinery. Also what happens when you find out that nobody will service your pumps because I've locked them all up too, and am paying more than you can afford. And you can't afford anything because you're selling every gallon at a loss. Meanwhile the last couple years of 100% margins have given me a giant pile of cash I can use to do all of these things.

That's just a basic example. Sure yeah maybe you could somehow attack this market, with a bunch of capital, maybe there's like something you could do to compete with me.

But you're an ambitious and aggressive entrepreneur and that is going to be a TON of work. Why not just, like, start a different business?

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

#186
post #104
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.

Policing was effective enough that I never had to find someone to unlock a case for me at the store unless I was purchasing something particularly valuable. It was effective enough that you didn't see videos of people looting stores or driving around breaking into cars with impunity.

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

#187

removed due to obligatory disclosure liability

> Despite the botfly score of an 83% LLM poorly auto-generated article

Can you explain what this comment means?

This article is the personal writing of Matt Stoller, the most prominent writer on issues of monopoly and anti-trust.

What do you think it is?

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

#188
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.

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.

Every GPU vendor knows that actually supporting a reimplementation of CUDA for their hardware immediately signs them up for two problems:

1. Protracted lawsuits with the (now) second-most-valuable company in the world. 2. Any significant customers being loudly reminded by Nvidia that the EULA for CUDA tools prohibits their use on non-Nvidia hardware.

The problem is not the technical challenge of reimplementing the CUDA API or tools. The problem is the users want CUDA, not something that looks and behaves like CUDA but requires them to load a different set of libraries.

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

#189

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…

> That’s an example of why the nihilism of MAGA is so appealing. The world is collapsing around many people.

And this is what I don't get about current US politics. MAGA = Republicans. The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. The Republican party is the party of elite businessmen lording over the working class. The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling rural communities and turning them into slums. They're voting for and supporting the very politicians who are "collapsing the world" around themselves. But why? It's not just idle nihilism. They're one of the most actively engaged political demographics in recent memory. Is the Culture War so important/motivating to these people that they are willing to help implement their own economic destruction?

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

#190

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 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…

The EU fixed it for airline tickets. It's not rocket surgery.
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