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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

#251

Post by zo1 »

alephnerd wrote: post #65
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…

Dunkin's are franchises. What you're describing is an inventory cataloging issue caused by limited quality and inventory control from corporate over franchisees.

Screw franchises and franchising. That's the kind of business model we need to get rid of, because it's basically a "subsidiary" model that shields the parent company from liability.

At the very least it complicates the dynamic. "Am I really hurting Dunkins or am I just ruining a small business owner that pays a crap ton of money to the franchise owner and mortgaged his house to open this little franchise of Dunkins".

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

#252

Post by creer »

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…

Not saying it's wrong but that seems a strange. Around here there are still small mills - some with strange strategies where they will drive lumber large distances. Although they do specialize in this or that product. And seem profitable even though they are small. Meaning that the market can perhaps be entered with a small mill.

But in many economic fields there are unstable states where all producers can be worried but happy not to expand and just raise prices - as long as nobody else expands. "Eventually" can be a long time.

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

#253

Post by alexpetralia »

Animats wrote: post #211

Four. That's the magic number. There have to be four competitors of significant size before prices go down. There are both EU and US studies substantiating this. It's been seen in cellular phone networks, ISPs, drugstores, and banks. Drop below the threshold of four, and the magic happens. Prices go up, margins go up, and consumers lose. Four should be the basis of antitrust policy. Less than four, and there are two…

How about Uber vs. Lyft, for example? Do you think there is competitive pricing here?

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

#254

Post by bequanna »

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.

In the long run, sure.

But as the saying goes: in the long run we’re all dead.

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

#255

Post by creer »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #133
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.

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.

In addition to the other response (risks), the economy is not a stable homogeneous field. None of the economy is a stable homogeneous field. Instead it's a bunch of discrete individuals living their life and each focusing on just a few things.

And this goes both ways. For a competitor to form requires one small team of founders who are insane enough (in a good way) to believe they should try it, and a funding source that's ready to take the gamble on/with them. So you might get a fantastically successful company "out of nowhere" (Amazon, say). Or you might get a field where nobody is at the moment on hand to try it. Or several do try it and fail silently and you never hear of them. They are individuals, not some mathematical process.

See also, even "efficient market" does not refer to THAT.

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

#256

Post by fire_lake »

alexpetralia wrote: post #253
Animats wrote: post #211

Four. That's the magic number. There have to be four competitors of significant size before prices go down. There are both EU and US studies substantiating this. It's been seen in cellular phone networks, ISPs, drugstores, and banks. Drop below the threshold of four, and the magic happens. Prices go up, margins go up, and consumers lose. Four should be the basis of antitrust policy. Less than four, and there are two…

How about Uber vs. Lyft, for example? Do you think there is competitive pricing here?

- they compete with local taxi firms

- they compete with other modes of transport

- prices have risen substantially after the VC land grab tailed off

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

#257

Post by AnimalMuppet »

CPLX wrote: post #246
gruez wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do they get a reward for being "right" in the eyes of the survey company or something? They are being asked how the economy is doing and they are saying fuck this. I'm guessing people have a basic sense that when they answer a media survey they're contributing to the narrative that the media will use, and they want the narrative to be this sucks. It's really not that deep. They don't, but like I said earlier it's fa…

> Again, you're conflating "how people feel about the economy" and "how the economy is actually doing". Indeed. And you're suffering from the delusion that there's some kind of distinction here that matters. There isn't. The economy fucking sucks. It sucks because normal people feel trapped and helpless in the face of corporate power and constant, rampant unethical conduct and cheating that seems to permeate literall…

Yeah. For normal people, "I am the economy". That is, I don't care about the national economy or the world economy. I don't care about how many widgets get produced this month. What difference does it make to me if the national economy is doing great, but I'm going broke? I care whether I can afford to buy what I need this month. To me, that's the economy.

(With "I" meaning the average person, not me personally.)

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

#258

Post by netbioserror »

rangestransform wrote: post #232
netbioserror wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to completely miss the anecdotal point about rural cultural decay. You can point to a chart showing rising wage growth all day, but if it's happening at the expense of long-lived communities being hollowed out, you're effectively celebrating peoples' destitution. It is incredible how Internet armchair technocrats will attempt to reduce human existence to a few equations and wonder why broader populations despise…

Rural existence is already subsidized by urban dwellers, I dunno what more they expect

[flagged]

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

#259

Post by gruez »

Animats wrote: post #211

Four. That's the magic number. There have to be four competitors of significant size before prices go down. There are both EU and US studies substantiating this. It's been seen in cellular phone networks, ISPs, drugstores, and banks. Drop below the threshold of four, and the magic happens. Prices go up, margins go up, and consumers lose. Four should be the basis of antitrust policy. Less than four, and there are two…

>That's the magic number. There have to be four competitors of significant size before prices go down. There are both EU and US studies substantiating this.

source?

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

#260

Post by throwup238 »

creer wrote: post #252
nothercastle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not saying it's wrong but that seems a strange. Around here there are still small mills - some with strange strategies where they will drive lumber large distances. Although they do specialize in this or that product. And seem profitable even though they are small. Meaning that the market can perhaps be entered with a small mill. But in many economic fields there are unstable states where all producers can be worried…

It's not about the size of the mill, but the capital cost to build a new one. No one is willing to invest the capital in building new mills because the old ones can always undercut their prices and kill them long before they turn a profit. It's the economic equivalent of a prisoner's dilemma.
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