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Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#111

Post by acdha »

JackFr wrote: post #92
skummetmaelk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.

> What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. That seems like the opposite of a solution. For such a system to work one has to believe that that the regulatory apparatus is staffed with monks who are unaffected by the temptations of wealth, power and vanity that other humans are subject to and that 'regulatory capture' isn't a real thing. Further that the price mechanism as an in…

You're acting like rules and oversight don't exist. Regulatory capture is a real problem but that means you need to take measures to prevent it, not give up on the concept — just as the threat of embezzlement doesn't mean we gave up on banking.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#112

Post by thriftwy »

leakybit wrote: post #108
thriftwy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the first time this story is on HN. I always wondered - why focus on selling to American hospitals which could not care less? If the problem is universal, pitch to elite European hospitals, especially Swiss. They cater for rich patients from all around the world and if it's a good idea they'll definitely be interested. Later on, when it catches, American hospitals will come to you too. Or maybe you will find that…

Why even bother with hospitals and there bureaucracy. They could pitch it to doctors offices and the end users, like diabetics.

Retail is a different game than batch supplies.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#113

Post by ericHosick »

Qwertious wrote: post #104
skummetmaelk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.

'People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.' Don't call it the free market. Call it what it is: COMPETITION. "Free market" implies "I can do what I want", but frankly we don't WANT people to be free to pull anti-c…

> "Free market" implies "I can do what I want"

I always though free implied free from non-consensual acts. It's not much of a free market if your actions are non-consensual (1).

(1) Defining what makes an action consensual is difficult but doable.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#114

Post by bluejekyll »

mjevans wrote: post #87
ams6110 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't pass the smell test to me. So a big company had 80% of the market? What about the other 20%?

Think Intel, AMD, and um, who else makes desktop grade chips? (No, netbooks/tops don't count)

Why not count those? ARM is much more democratized and is huge. With the advent of compiler backend abstractions being used in LLVM and GCC, it's even possible to target unique chips more easily.

Intel is definitely no longer the monopoly player they were after the huge success of ARM in lower power environments.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#115

Post by shmerl »

adrianN wrote: post #107
shmerl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market means free from monopolies as well.

No it doesn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

It does:

> One view is that a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.

That's how I define it. Monopoly makes the market non free.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#116

Post by shmerl »

bluejekyll wrote: post #109
shmerl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market means free from monopolies as well.

Conversely, a free market is free for monopolies to form; is free to charge whatever they want; is free to block other companies from entering and selling to a company via any means short of bribery (although even that could be thought of as free); is free to to do anything when competing short of breaking the law. We do not live in a free society, we are not free to do whatever we want; for example, I don't think an…

> Conversely, a free market is free for monopolies to form;

Which will make it non free. Free market requires mechanisms of preventing monopolies by its definition.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#117

Post by sova »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #50
wyager wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. How would you know? We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century, even if we ignore government-granted monopolies via restricted land grants and patents.

At least to me it looks like making the market more "free" by means of deregulation would only exacerbate the problems mentioned above.

Making the market "monopoly and oligopoly free" by regulation, as a synopsis.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#118

Post by stinkytaco »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #44

Does anyone else think that nearly all huge companies exist due to monopolies or near-monopolies? MS has monopoly on desktops. Apple on cell phones and tablets. Facebook on social networking. Google on search. I think any market without at least 3-4 strong competitors will devolve into one dominant player who can milk more from the customer base.

Part of the issue here is defining "market" and their scope. MS has a monopoly on desktops, but how much impact does that have with people increasingly shifting off the desktop? How do you define Facebook's market? If it's "social media" does that include blogging? twitter? email?

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#119

Post by noir_lord »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #28
cs702 wrote: post #4

"I started a manufacturing company in Little Elm, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to produce the first-ever automatically retracting syringe to eliminate the risk of nurses contracting HIV through accidental needle sticks. The syringe received rave reviews from nurses, hospital executives and public health officials, a major grant from the National Institutes of Health and robust private investment. But when my partn…

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.

> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour.

I've joked for years that the end stage of capitalism is "one company selling you oxygen".

Turns out someone else had that idea back in the 1920's and there is a 'sci-fi' book based on the premise.

Re: Want to rescue rural America? Bust monopolies

#120

Post by ScottBurson »

tanderson92 wrote: post #5

Highly relevant: Matt Stoller in The Atlantic: "How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul In the 1970s, a new wave of post-Watergate liberals stopped fighting monopoly power. The result is an increasingly dangerous political system." https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-dem...

This is an excellent piece that explains a lot about how we got into the situation we're in. Another quote:

By the late 1970s, the populist Brandeisian anti-monopoly tradition—protecting communities by breaking up concentrations of power—had been air-brushed out of the debate. And in doing so, America’s fundamental political vision transformed: from protecting citizen sovereignty to maximizing consumer welfare.

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