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

291–300 of 457 posts

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

#291

Post by scrubadub »

mptest wrote: post #244
pessimizer wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't confuse your stereotypes of people for actual people. > The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The Republican party is half the country. "Demographic data compiled in the 2016 and 2020 elections showed that the top 40 percent of income earners preferred the Democratic candidate for president (Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden) over the R…

>> The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. >I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. They oppose estate or "death" taxes in general. That is what they mean. >The Republican party is half the country. They're half of voters. They haven't won the popular vote in how many years? 40? They're an obnoxiously loud minority. >All of them? Probably not all, but nearly all. The maga tariffs and th…

[flagged]

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

#292

Post by johnnyanmac »

WalterBright wrote: post #280
fire_lake wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- they compete with local taxi firms - they compete with other modes of transport - prices have risen substantially after the VC land grab tailed off

[flagged]

I sure wish they did more. My dang state passed Prop 22: https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based...

>App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies Initiative (2020)

Sad part is it wasn't even close. Guess capitalism still can buy votes, even ones that work against your best interests as a working class.

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

#293

Post by [deleted] »

scrubadub wrote: post #291
mptest wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. >I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. They oppose estate or "death" taxes in general. That is what they mean. >The Republican party is half the country. They're half of voters. They haven't won the popular vote in how many years? 40? They're an obnoxiously loud minority. >All of them? Probably not all, but nearly all. The maga tariffs and th…

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#294

Post by johnnyanmac »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #281
WalterBright wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's like there was never a business model there then. Well, in a first world country anyway.

For my area in Los Angeles, it wasn't viable because everyone (or someone you know) has a car. a friend ride is much cheaper than an Uber.

I only download the Uber app when I need to get to the airport and am leaving for weeks at a time. Any other time, I take myself, ask a friend, or even consider what remnants we have of public transportation (e.g. instead of taking a horribly expensive uber in/out of LAX, take a shuttle to some smaller area and then hitch a ride. can easily save 4x the cost for a $5 bus ride and maybe 30-45 extra minutes)

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

#295

Post by lovich »

WalterBright wrote: post #284
jmyeet wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking generally, not to you specifically, it seems like a ton of people see the problems created by capitalism and decide the solution is even more capitalism . I don't think there's a magical number of competitors that fixes things. We see an interesting phenomenon in commercial landlords where we have a ton of players but they all use the same software [1], which creates an effective monopoly even though it's no…

> It's just not feasible or economical to have 4+ broadband networks being built in an area Actually, it is. When telephone systems were invented, lots of telephone companies sprang up and ran wires everywhere. The barrier to this happening with broadband is regulation. Regulators work hard to ensure there is no broadband competition. > it seems like a ton of people see the problems created by capitalism and decide t…

> When telephone systems were invented, lots of telephone companies sprang up and ran wires everywhere.

They did and cities ended up looking like this http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--91pqSjxr...

There is not enough space to dedicate to electrical and internet wiring with a competition model like this. The physical space is a natural monopoly. What should be done is to treat the wiring as a utility but allow for unlimited competition on the actual service, which is how the UK operates their internet service iirc

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

#296

Post by johnnyanmac »

kiney wrote: post #70
doe_eyes wrote: post #35

What I find odd about the article is that it does very little to substantiate its core claim - that the reason the economy is broken are small monopolists-but-not-really-monopolists who are trying to fleece you. It opens with the example of rising construction costs. The only remotely relevant example here is Autodesk, but by the article's own admission, "the cost of these products remains relatively minor". And that…

There's a very simple reason why it does very little to substantiate its core claim: The claim is simply wrong and therefore can't be substantiated

so, you do not believe prices are inflating?

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

#297

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

I'm doing awful, personally. But I guess my industry is an exception among exceptions. Still feels bad.

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

#298

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gruez wrote: post #272
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Yet as a whole, people estimate the nation's economy worse than their own. Clearly this can't be the case if everyone thinks their economic circumstances are the nation's economic circumstances, because if that were the case you'd expect them to align on a national basis. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the...

I think you could (almost) build a consistent picture: Economic output is doing well, a lot of people are working, but the rich are taking all the gains and the workers are just barely surviving.

The problem is, if that's the case, who's buying all the output? It's not just going into warehouses. So people must be able to buy all this stuff.

An alternate view would be that people have been buying all this stuff, mostly on credit, and are realizing that they're maxed out on credit, especially if interest rates rise.

But ultimately, the "sentiment" view matters. It may not matter as much as the actual output numbers, but it matters, because people are not purely "homo economicus". They make decisions on how they feel about how things are going, and if they think things are going badly, they buy less, and eventually that influences the actual figures.

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

#299

Post by berniedurfee »

adzm wrote: post #278
berniedurfee wrote: post #264

They forgot Adobe. Oh, and Protools. And I’m sure many others.

Protools has plenty of competition in my experience.

Not in pro-studios. Most are stuck in Protools forever due to lack of interoperability with other software.

You can run anything you want, until you need to send a session to another studio and they only use Protools.

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

#300

Post by cjblomqvist »

saulpw wrote: post #288
mensetmanusman wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many more humans would be needed to support 4 of every company type?

None, if each of the companies were 1/4 of the size.

Not necessarily true. Economies of scale is a thing.
Post reply on HN