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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

#331

Post by fallingknife »

nothercastle wrote: post #306
fallingknife wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be paid out of tax money either way. To save me money the government would have to either: 1. run the operation at least 90% as cost effectively 2. be less likely to make major costly mistakes From my experience with government the probability of 1 is 0% and the probability of 2 is minimal. At least when PG&E caused those wildfires, their execs were fired and had to pay $100 million of their own personal mone…

The fact that they had 100 mil to pay speaks of the excesses salaries were paying them. PGE isn’t really run any more efficiently than a government institution, at least with government there is some measure of transparency, though accountability is lacking for both situations. Capitalism doesn’t drive efficiency when there is no competition, in fact the incentive for PGE is to drive up actual costs and then raise pr…

That 100 mil is 0.4% of annual revenue, and that isn't one year's pay, it's a lifetime of accumulation. There were 20 people in the settlement averaging close to 6 mil each (it was actually 117 mil total). That's really not that high of a net worth for people running an enormous power company. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.

As for transparency, audited financial statements of public companies are infinitely more information than you will ever get about the finances of a government bureaucracy. And their only incentive is to use up their budget so they can ask for an increase next year.

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

#332

Post by galdosdi »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #128
torpfactory wrote: post #53

I have a theory that one of the core problems is that American businesses just expect to make too much money. Everyone seems to be aiming for 30% gross margin or more, and then working to get monopoly power or regulatory capture in order to achieve that. When I work with businesses in China they sort of expect cutthroat competition and I'm sure they're not seeing 30% margins. Low a behold stuff is a lot cheaper there…

> I have a theory that one of the core problems is that American businesses just expect to make too much money. If you pay attention to certain board meetings, earnings calls, and so on, or if you had the opportunity to work for certain companies, you'll find people talking about the growth of growth, i.e. second order. It seems that the notion of sustainable growth is just gone. Corporations chasing lofty goals in a…

This excess greed in the shareholding class is really disturbing, because historically very similar behavior has preceded decadence, decline, and fall.

The roman empire's last decades and centuries were marked by huge growth in the latifundium (large plantations owned by a few rich politically connected men) which were powered by cheap slave labor in contrast to the earlier freeholding small farmers who famously formed the backbone of the Roman state by earning their farms in exchange for their ten years or military service, thus achieving the Roman Dream.

Ironically the latifundium, in their quest to maximize growth and profits for the few at all costs, were actually far less productive than the freeholders.

It is disturbing how close an analogy this forms to modern Wall St culture focused on "growth at all costs" and only thinking one quarter ahead at a time

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

#333

Post by sologoub »

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…

> Four.

Interestingly, the US cell phone industry would seem competitive - major players (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) and a bunch of smaller and/or regional players including the incumbent telcos like xfinity and spectrum. Then you dig a little deeper and see that all that “competition” runs on the towers of one of the three and unlike with the reform of British Telecom (BT), there are no requirements for this infra to be offered at any kind of lower price or at cost enabling competition for the last mile service.

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

#334

Post by mptest »

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]

They are fixing no problems. Before I get back to your comment, I have to ask.

You earnestly believe the party voting for children to work longer hours, more dangerous jobs, the party ensuring rape victims and children give birth to their rapists' child and in general remove women's medical autonomy, on religious grounds in a constitutionally secular democracy, are the ones 'defending women'? Shocking position.

They are encouraging ignorance and harassment. They are inspiring people like you to think there is any issue with trans people in the first place.

You have been tricked in to thinking trans people are anything more than a mostly invisible minority.

They lost the "gays and gay marriage is the devil" line and now have simply regressed to even weaker bigotry, the 1% or less I forget the exact % of people who are trans.

They do not, nor has anyone, "demanded everything that's been set up for women now has to include any male who says he's a woman".

These labels, man and woman, are flexible social labels, not the rigorous biological category they've convinced simpletons to believe in as some sort of personal axiom.

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

#335

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

WalterBright wrote: post #286
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…

> the article falls for the classic trap of "rising prices are not inflation, it's ". Inflation is a general price increase caused by an increase in the supply of money relative to the value of goods and services in the economy. It's simple supply & demand - more money chasing the same number of goods => general price increases. Inflation prices never going down is a clear indicator that this is the cause. A general…

Inflation should effect wages proportionally to prices. If it does not, its just a price imcrease, which is whats happening. Something, termites, something ...

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

#336

Post by scrubadub »

mptest wrote: post #334
scrubadub wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They are fixing no problems. Before I get back to your comment, I have to ask. You earnestly believe the party voting for children to work longer hours, more dangerous jobs, the party ensuring rape victims and children give birth to their rapists' child and in general remove women's medical autonomy, on religious grounds in a constitutionally secular democracy, are the ones 'defending women'? Shocking position. They…

I don't believe that either the Republicans or the Democrats are defending women, no. They're both patriarchal institutions that are misogynistic in different ways.

> They do not, nor has anyone, "demanded everything that's been set up for women now has to include any male who says he's a woman".

Sorry but you have been misinformed, this is the currently the actual progressive position. And it has led to horrifying outcomes when enacted into law, such as SB132 in California which allows imprisoned men to transfer to the women's prisons if they claim to be women: https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...

> These labels, man and woman, are flexible social labels, not the rigorous biological category they've convinced simpletons to believe in as some sort of personal axiom.

No, what you're describing is a sexist redefinition of woman and man. There's really no need for it. It just reifies sex-role stereotypes.

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

#337

Post by bequanna »

elliotto wrote: post #328
bequanna wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piketty is not my favorite. I consider him a pure academic who tends to cherry pick data. In reality, wealth tends to cluster around people who are good stewards of it. They allocate capital efficiently and we are all better off. The government is NOT a good steward of wealth. They allocate inefficiently (because no accountability) so we should minimize what we give them. Here is a quick and dirty reference discussin…

This is wild to disagree with Pikettys magnum opus with a reference to a yahoo finance news article

The dude is a pure academic and just trying to sell socialism with hand waving.

I look at it differently: His ideas are so weak and removed from reality that they can’t even stand up to a Yahoo Finance article.

We should be careful taking policy advice from people who have never had real jobs.

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

#338

Post by [deleted] »

elliotto wrote: post #328
bequanna wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piketty is not my favorite. I consider him a pure academic who tends to cherry pick data. In reality, wealth tends to cluster around people who are good stewards of it. They allocate capital efficiently and we are all better off. The government is NOT a good steward of wealth. They allocate inefficiently (because no accountability) so we should minimize what we give them. Here is a quick and dirty reference discussin…

This is wild to disagree with Pikettys magnum opus with a reference to a yahoo finance news article

[deleted]

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

#339

Post by roenxi »

HWR_14 wrote: post #324
roenxi wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Four should be the basis of antitrust policy. Less than four, and there are two options - break up, or become a regulated public utility. 3 options; usually monopolies are matched by regulatory constraints making competition expensive. Removing the barriers to other firms entering the market is always an option.

I'm not sure of many, if any, monopolies where regulatory constraints are the cause. Especially compared to causes like network effects. Do you have a modern example? I can think of a couple of examples where regulations exist to manage other constraints on competition, like the FCC regulating the spectrum. But not where the regulations cause the number of major competitors to decrease dramatically.

One example I like is Internet Explorer. IE had a "monopoly" back in the early 2000s and made up something like 90% of the browser market. Then Firefox came along and broke the market open, then Google and Apple rolled in like bulldozers [0] and we got to a healthy 4-player market.

Everywhere except for South Korea. You can still read articles on it to this day [1]. Regulations had an unfortunate interaction that made IE into the only option and set up an actual monopoly situation.

The caveat is I personally think monopoly is called far too quickly; as far as I can tell every successful product is a monopoly to someone on HN. A lot of the things people want to call monopolies aren't, they are markets like the browser market that haven't finished settling. Unfortunately they can become ossified due to bad regulatory practice.

[0] What Steve Jobs did to Flash should come with 18+ violence content warnings. They were the days. Nothing could be done about that scourge until suddenly something had been done.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/business/korea-internet-e...

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

#340

Post by Forgeties79 »

fallingknife wrote: post #186
varjag wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s because companies have successfully PR’d their way into “shoplifting is the greatest threat to the US economy.”
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