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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

#431

Post by listenallyall »

sanex wrote: post #344
sologoub wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

5 years ago or so I had T-Mobile for $50/month unlimited everything. I switched off and just went back for $170 for a phone for my wife and I. To pretend to be comparable on a per line basis they gave me a phone number that I literally could not refuse. Before they bought Sprint we had the magic 4 but now it's 3 and a bunch of resellers.

> 3 and a bunch of resellers.

You just explained why prices went up - not because Sprint exited, but because the market bifurcated into prepaid and postpaid. You can get unlimited everything on T-Mobile's network from Mint, for about $30 per month. You just have to pay up front, and you have to bring your own phone. The "majors" have raised prices on 1- and 2- line plans because they are positioning themselves as a premium product especially for families and groups with lots of lines. No point in competing to a race to the bottom vs Mint, Cricket, Metro, etc.

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

#432

Post by Gormo »

vineyardmike wrote: post #397
WalterBright wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you look at the picture I linked, and think this is a preferable end state over some extra regulatory cost? That you would rather have those sets of cables all over the place and think the government is preventing this better state? Yes, I saw the picture. It means it is not prohibitively expensive to run multiple wires. Yes, it is unsightly. But there are many, many ways to run multiple signals today. Technolog…

> For example, one trench or pipe can provide space for a large number of wires. The community can provide a pipe for such purposes, like they provide pipes for other purposes. Congrats on describing municipal broadband while arguing against government involvement.

Nothing in the preceding comment remotely resembles any proposal for municipal broadband. Even if a municipal government were doing the work he assigns to "the community", that work consists of maintaining a system of conduit within which other parties can run their own fiber lines connected to their own networks, and wouldn't at all imply that the municipality would own or operate any of the physical network infrastructure, nor operate ISP services.

And there's no necessity that role of "the community" be handed off to a municipal government, either. People can and do solve complex coordination problems without relying on political authority all the time -- "the community" could easily be a non-profit organization, a mutual owned by local residents, or just a series of reciprocal agreements to maintain the baseline infrastructure needed for other parties to run cables, without any municipal government being involved.

The idea that any non-trivial coordination problem can only be solved by centralized political authority is one of the principal drivers of corruption and stagnation in modern society, and is itself one of the main causes of competitive markets degenerating into monopolies or oligopolies.

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

#433

Post by yoyohello13 »

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...

I'm sure those rural workers watching their towns disintegrate around them will be happy to know they are at least making a extra couple bucks an hour.

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

#434

Post by yoyohello13 »

galdosdi wrote: post #332
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 form…

The more things change the more they stay the same. Despite all our progress we are still the same humans we were 1000 years ago. There will always be people getting rich off of others labor. Eventually the working class gets mad enough to re-balance power for a time until the cycle starts again. For some reason we just accept this as inevitable.

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

#435

Post by CPLX »

gruez wrote: post #270
CPLX wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Indeed. And you're suffering from the delusion that there's some kind of distinction here that matters. >There isn't. the distinction does matter because policy discussion should be around facts rather than vibes. Voters are the ultimate arbiters for what policy should be, but that doesn't mean we should shrug when their beliefs are objectively wrong. > The economy fucking sucks. It sucks because [...] All the point…

> the distinction does matter because policy discussion should be around facts rather than vibes.

You're just suggesting we use different vibes.

There's nothing more factual about a random opinion survey or report from an economic research organization with an agenda than anything else.

Mainstream economics IS all vibes at this point. Not sure how someone could miss it.

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

#436

Post by CPLX »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #411
CPLX wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those to whom the returns on capital are accruing. Again none of this stuff is super groundbreaking. Shantytown hills overlooking mansions surrounded by high walls and barbed wire is kind of a global norm. As America edges closer it only feels unfamiliar to those of us that have become accustomed to something different.

I don't believe it. Take cars specifically. The US makes 11 million new cars a month. If regular people can't afford them, are billionaires really buying up all those cars? How many new cars does a billionaire need? Where are they parking them all? I can believe your explanation with money. I can even believe it with houses, with rich people buying up houses as an investment. But I can't believe it with cars. Regular…

Because cars wear out and are scrapped? Not sure where you're going with this.

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

#437

Post by CPLX »

citizenpaul wrote: post #423
CPLX wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disputing with banks isn't particularly reliable. These larger companies have a script now for responding for one, and the other thing that happens is they'll kill your account and permanently ban you. Neither of those accomplishes the goal of being able to purchase the product or service without being ripped off .

>Neither of those accomplishes the goal of being able to purchase the product or service without being ripped off. I'd argue that its impossible to totally do that since humanity has never figured out how to remove scammers from the population. It is the way to fight back against it so I think that is really splitting hairs on complex sociology-econmic explanations. Do you really want to continue do business with a c…

> Do you really want to continue do business with a company ripping you off?

Fucking no. Which is why it sucks when that's not a choice we have.

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

#438

Post by yareal »

randomdata wrote: post #428
yareal wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original poster is correct, the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. With no savings (in the personal finance sense). Example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-pa... What's challenging for you about these numbers? Your original response included mortgages in saving, which is atypical. If you exclude mortgages, which is typical, do the numbers make more sense? > It is not like…

> The original poster is correct Seemingly not, else we'd have seen the math already. Also, 1. Not having savings (in the personal finance sense) does not mean one is living paycheque to paycheque. 2. The article you link to defines living paycheck to paycheck as a scenario where the family income does not cover expenses . Principal repayment is not an expense. Outside of the 1-2% with interest-only mortgages, anyone…

> Principal repayment is not an expense.

In the links I posted several comments above, you'll find that it is considered an expense for the purposes of personal savings.

I don't disagree with your definition, btw, it's just not the common one.

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

#439

Post by 1oooqooq »

sodality2 wrote: post #403
1oooqooq wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's actually saying the opposite. it's claims is that everything really is better, but the "vibe" is to complain. it's a counter to the "silent majority" suffering in red states. it's a inane political spin that did not take on.

I just don’t even know where you’re getting this from. I have to wonder if you’ve read the original article. If that’s what you got from the wikipedia page, it’s wrong - I have Scanlon’s book in my hand and here’s a quote straight from the vibecession chapter > “Of course, as I have talked about throughout the book, there are many real problems with the economy. We have a structural affordability crisis. A housing cr…

I'm going exclusively from the wikipedia article, which have things like

"When polled, most Americans had a negative perception of the economy, with some saying that it had even entered a period of recession, while data showed that inflation was going down and GDP growing. This pessimism about the overall economy heavily contrasted with Americans' perception of their own financial situation, which they said was mostly positive.[5]"

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

#440

Post by anticensor »

WalterBright wrote: post #384
nitwit005 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet somehow those incompatible telephone systems, rail systems, power systems, and everything else all came into existence. USB is widely highlighted as an unusual success. But Apple has notably created their own incompatible connectors, and made money that way, which is why Europe is busy forcing a charging standard. Gasoline is very obviously government regulated. 2 by 4s are only sort of standardized.

> Gasoline is very obviously government regulated. The chemical makeup of it? The government banned tetra ethyl lead in it, and mandated some ethanol in it, but the rest is various mixes made by the gas companies. > 2 by 4s are only sort of standardized. I've bought 2 by 4s for most of my life. They're a standard size.

> The chemical makeup of it? The government banned tetra ethyl lead in it, and mandated some ethanol in it, but the rest is various mixes made by the gas companies.

There's a mil-spec gasoline that has to contain exact proportions of specific alkanes and ethanol to very tight tolerances, that could be taken as the golden standard gasoline.

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