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America has a monopoly problem

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Re: America has a monopoly problem

#151

Post by oconnore »

nikolay wrote: post #142

Monopolies are a natural phenomenon in capitalism. I'm not sure why people glorify capitalism as much, given the fact that competition is impossibly hard in many areas, and that to reduce costs, and remove competitive pressure, companies tends to consolidate, i.e. reduce competition. Neither socialism nor capitalism makes sense today. We need a totally new system, but it's really hard to make a dent into the status q…

> We need a totally new system

This seems historically ignorant. Most systems of allocating power and resources have been tried at various times. The answer is likely at the end of a long, nuanced, and painful road of combining ideas from several of those systems: adjusting, revisiting, admitting failure, and correcting.

I would be skeptical of any "new system" that is not a result of reflection on historical economies.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#152

Post by nikolay »

scarface74 wrote: post #117

From the article Firms like Microsoft led in the innovation in creating new barriers to entry. How could one compete with a browser provided at a zero price. I think what happened to Microsoft is the perfect example of how to overcome a monopoly. 20 years ago, everyone thought that Microsoft’s monopoly was unassailable. Google barely existed, Facebook didn’t exist, Amazon was a bookseller and Apple was basically bank…

ISPs are monopolies in the purest form. Here in Orange County, California, you have no choice but go with Cox. And that's why an internet service, which costs less than $10 around the globe and is symmetrical and offers higher bandwidth, costs $100 here! Even worse when it comes to the business internet service! I had to find internet service for a church here in OC and the pricing starts at $200 for 10 Mbps!

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#153

Post by marcosdumay »

curiousgeorgio wrote: post #56
whistlerbrk wrote: post #14

America has a corruption problem. The ability for companies to vertically integrate and essentially make smaller businesses non-competitive can only occur when you don't have to pay the taxes your smaller competitors have to pay and don't have to obey the same laws your competitors have to obey. We have a systemic corruption problem (manifested in lobbying) coupled with greed on scales we've never seen before. Everyt…

Think of it this way: it's not that the larger companies are breaking the laws or simply not paying taxes that they owe - they're just being more innovative in how they approach those things. In a global economy, when there's pressure to pay lower wages by outsourcing labor, pay lower taxes by organizing some or all of the company abroad, or exploit loopholes in domestic laws for greater efficiency, that's just what…

> hint: it's not manufacturing anymore in the US

I highly doubt that is true. I mean, there are only 3 basic economics sectors, and you just stroke an entire one out of the question.

It is way more likely that the reality is more nuanced, and the US can not efficiently manufacture some things, while keeping the lead on some other things.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#154

Post by nikolay »

oconnore wrote: post #151
nikolay wrote: post #142

Monopolies are a natural phenomenon in capitalism. I'm not sure why people glorify capitalism as much, given the fact that competition is impossibly hard in many areas, and that to reduce costs, and remove competitive pressure, companies tends to consolidate, i.e. reduce competition. Neither socialism nor capitalism makes sense today. We need a totally new system, but it's really hard to make a dent into the status q…

> We need a totally new system This seems historically ignorant. Most systems of allocating power and resources have been tried at various times. The answer is likely at the end of a long, nuanced, and painful road of combining ideas from several of those systems: adjusting, revisiting, admitting failure, and correcting. I would be skeptical of any "new system" that is not a result of reflection on historical economi…

No, I think your opinion is arrogant and ignorant. All existing systems are based on the technical limitations of the past time. In Australia, for example, there's a good start to integrate new ideas into the existing system - it's called Flux [0].

Edit: to clarify about Flux, it's still using an existing system, i.e. Democracy although it is implemented as Direct and Delegate Democracy within a Representative Democracy system, but, my point was, that such system could be used as a political virus to change the system from within without bloodshed, and then a totally new system can be put in place.

[0]: https://voteflux.org/

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#155

Post by mschuster91 »

privateprofile wrote: post #72
Brakenshire wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has a set of laws called State Aid, which disallows member states from subsidizing business to the detriment of their competitors (either other businesses or other states). Government can improve infrastructure, but cannot literally hand out cash to build a factory, or anything like that. This exists even though EU nation states have far more individual power than US states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State…

> Government can improve infrastructure, but cannot literally hand out cash to build a factory, or anything like that. Yes, because such "subsidies" would create competition for companies from more developed EU countries, the same countries that drive the acceptance of new EU members. Removing these obstacles crushed local industry, which is why less developed countries ended up with close to zero industrial producti…

> Removing these obstacles crushed local industry

Not really. The problem with most of the small-ish EU countries is that with the exception of Cyprus, Austria, Finland and Sweden, all the 13 countries that joined after GDR/BRD unification were former USSR or Yugoslavian countries + the GDR itself which was USSR allied. This means that their entire industry companys were either uncompetitive since decades (but kept artificially alive by the realo-socialist states) or got fleeced by local or foreign mafia (or, in the case of former GDR aka East Germany, by the Treuhand which has had its fair share of scandals) after the fall of the USSR.

In addition, there's a _massive_ wealth gap between the EU/EEA core (Germany, France, the Nordic states, Switzerland and UK), which bled all other EU nations dry of young people (they went off to study and stayed) and loads of working-age people (they went off to earn money to support their families at home, and stayed). The people "left behind" tend to be old-ish and politically conservative, which doesn't exactly help when everything around is changing at an unknown (for Soviet/Yugoslavia) pace... and what's left of young people today flees from the corruption and religious-conservative politicians.

What saddens me is that I have no idea if the situation can be fixed at all. Manufacturing or heavy industry isn't going to come back, no matter how hard Trump or his ideological "friends" try. It will stay in China or maybe migrate to Africa as soon as Chinese labor gets too expensive/the Chinese politics too restrictive. All that remains is agriculture (which is going to be more and more automated), tiny chunks of natural resources exploitation, and tourism. Maybe a bit of IT stuff, but people are highly skeptical of nearshoring/offshoring since the "big companies" (Accidenture, IBM, whatever) spoiled the well, and the local markets by far don't have as much demand...

Source: am half Croatian, half German (born and raised in Germany though).

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#156

Post by losteric »

jasode wrote: post #77
losteric wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - didn't feel it was worth mentioning considering the original and the criticism I linked to :) I like drawing parallels between economics and ecology... monopolies are farms, massive artificial monocultures that suppress natural competition and extract value for the profit of a few. They embody a cycle of growth and stagnation. A healthy economy is more like a jungle, innumerable smaller competitors with div…

>A healthy economy is more like a jungle, innumerable smaller competitors ... that leads to fascinating innovation. I think you missed PT's point. The word "monopoly" has overshadowed his message. He wants people to pursue "blue ocean"[1] ideas to be innovative . Instead of starting a company that makes another generic clone of aspirin, you pursue a drug that cures breast cancer . Or instead of building a business th…

I think you missed my point too... I'm not talking about Thiel. I addressed him and changed topics.

What you're describing is a jungle. Niches with dominant players that share in a diverse resilient economy. Bees and hummingbirds compete for the same resources but they are not copycats.

A monopoly is a farm, an established entity that's taken control of the local system to suppress disrupters.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#157

Post by astrodust »

nikolay wrote: post #142

Monopolies are a natural phenomenon in capitalism. I'm not sure why people glorify capitalism as much, given the fact that competition is impossibly hard in many areas, and that to reduce costs, and remove competitive pressure, companies tends to consolidate, i.e. reduce competition. Neither socialism nor capitalism makes sense today. We need a totally new system, but it's really hard to make a dent into the status q…

"Socialism" and "capitalism" are not switches you turn either on or off, they're a set of policies and practices you can apply to varying degrees and extremes.

The military is quite socialist as when you enlist you're given food, housing, equipment, medical care, and other things to perform your job, but it's also part of a large capitalist system where equipment and supplies are provisioned from a (theoretically) competitive marketplace.

What we need to do is find the right balance between dog-eat-dog individualism and insufferable collectivisim.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#158

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

yannyu wrote: post #148
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it still applies. There's plenty of articles that have been posted here talking about how the real way to make money is SaaS, not on-prem. In that context, the provider is making more profit with no further innovation, in fact the only thing they've added is a limitation. To quote from your link: Rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in exce…

To universally label the move from on-prem, perpetual licensing to SaaS as pure rent-seeking is to misunderstand how different kinds of software products are purchased and used by different users. As far as enterprise/business customers go, SaaS has been huge in reducing vendor lock-in and enabling customers to choose the best fit for their use case. SaaS has removed the huge costs of PoCs and initial adoption, meani…

Damn I got a buzzword bingo on your second paragraph, holy crap man. Do you think a toll-road operator couldn't also describe all the benefits of a toll-road? Does that make it not rent-seeking? Look, we're on a (at least mildly) technical forum, we can be honest here - SaaS has been great for providers and sometimes great for customers. And I'm not talking about off-the-shelf vs built-in-house, I'm talking about billing method.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#159

Post by jasode »

losteric wrote: post #156
jasode wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A healthy economy is more like a jungle, innumerable smaller competitors ... that leads to fascinating innovation. I think you missed PT's point. The word "monopoly" has overshadowed his message. He wants people to pursue "blue ocean"[1] ideas to be innovative . Instead of starting a company that makes another generic clone of aspirin, you pursue a drug that cures breast cancer . Or instead of building a business th…

I think you missed my point too... I'm not talking about Thiel. I addressed him and changed topics. What you're describing is a jungle. Niches with dominant players that share in a diverse resilient economy. Bees and hummingbirds compete for the same resources but they are not copycats. A monopoly is a farm, an established entity that's taken control of the local system to suppress disrupters.

>I addressed him

That's the part I was replying to. When you say "I agree" with parent post that disagreed that "[monopoly] is also good for society as a whole."

>A monopoly is a farm,...

I wasn't replying to this alternative analogy. I think we both agree that PT wasn't using "monopoly" in this manner. His usage of "monopoly" was closer to your "jungle" ecosystem. My point was that you may actually not be disagreeing with PT.

Re: America has a monopoly problem

#160

Post by yannyu »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #158
yannyu wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To universally label the move from on-prem, perpetual licensing to SaaS as pure rent-seeking is to misunderstand how different kinds of software products are purchased and used by different users. As far as enterprise/business customers go, SaaS has been huge in reducing vendor lock-in and enabling customers to choose the best fit for their use case. SaaS has removed the huge costs of PoCs and initial adoption, meani…

Damn I got a buzzword bingo on your second paragraph, holy crap man. Do you think a toll-road operator couldn't also describe all the benefits of a toll-road? Does that make it not rent-seeking? Look, we're on a (at least mildly) technical forum, we can be honest here - SaaS has been great for providers and sometimes great for customers. And I'm not talking about off-the-shelf vs built-in-house, I'm talking about bil…

You can attack the presentation of the content, but do you think anyone wants to go back to the days of dealing with Oracle and SAP charging you for perpetual license and support, and then also needing consulting by the hour from them or a Deloitte/Accenture? Things really sucked in enterprise software in the 90s, and SaaS has made a lot of things so much better.

And I'm not talking about off-the-shelf vs built-in-house, I'm talking about billing method.

In many cases, the billing method has influenced the way the products work and how they're developed.

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