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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

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Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#151

Post by rocqua »

UncleEntity wrote: post #127
bovermyer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that. "Loss prevention" divisions in larger corporations might allow for some amount of unpunished theft, but once that number gets high enough, they'll implement measures to control it. Sometimes, that takes the form of locking down shelves, but I imagine some take a more reactive approach. Additionally, the amount of video and audio (and other data) recorded is increasing, not decreasing. As tracking techno…

> I don't think it'll be too long before we'll have "arrest-a-thief" as-a-service. I believe that's called '911'...

You can't solve capacity or 'caring' problems at 911 by just paying more, or threatening to buy services elsewhere. So there's good reason to think it's not what corporations want.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#152

Post by stickfigure »

gmueckl wrote: post #76

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently.…

[flagged]

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#153

Post by BIackSwan »

All these genre of articles are of the same vein.

- corporations are inherently evil. They are akin to criminals.

Every single time the author has never run a business that is equivalent at the scale of the business being criticized.

And they attribute to malice that can be explained with systematic incentives or complex interactions between various complex components in a dynamic world.

Its not the same as committing a crime.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#154

Post by ajmurmann »

constantcrying wrote: post #105
fny wrote: post #18

Don’t react to the Airbnb and Uber: read the article to the end. The core argument is tech empowers oligopolies which in turn drives inflation. There are other damning facts too: > private equity companies have rolled up all the fire truck companies, hiking the price of trucks, creating backlogs and bottlenecks for parts and service, and starving the nation's municipalities (including Los Angeles) Capitalism is dead.…

>The core argument is tech empowers oligopolies which in turn drives inflation. No it isn't. How is potato farming "tech"?

Read the article! The point is that there is a app that facilitates potato price fixing

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#155

Post by wat10000 »

stickfigure wrote: post #97
fny wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current administration, however, plans to let M&A run wild. Oligopolies don’t need an app for uncoordinated price fixing. The fact that there’s a cartel that controls 97% of the frozen potato market is wild . This will only get worse without breakups.

> cartel that controls 97% of the frozen potato market This is a weird and emotionally loaded statement. Properly stated, the top four frozen potato producers have 97% of the market share . That doesn't sound odd? In a mature market with very little technology innovation (potatoes) and very little geographic specificity (frozen), how many companies would you expect? How many laundry detergent companies are there? How…

Those statements are not equivalent. “Cartel” and “top four producers” mean very different things. I don’t know if there is in fact a cartel, but you’re missing the point.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#156

Post by HarryHirsch »

ajmurmann wrote: post #98
gmueckl wrote: post #76

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently.…

"But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily." All companies are greedy. That's the reason for existence. Your point that monopolies and oligopolies need to be crushed is very valid though. I wish more mergers were rejected in the first place. Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though.

Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though

That's an assertion, not a statement of fact. Pricing in natural monopolies is a mature subject, and public utilities have been a thing for over 100 years. Also, pricing for medical procedures is regulated in Europe, and it works extremely well.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#157

Post by gruez »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

>Contrast that to how individuals get the hammer put down on them by the justice system if they so much as fart in the wrong room. The lesson from the last 50 years should be: If you want to commit a crime and get away with it, do it as a corporation.

That's because most crimes "individuals" do are straightforwardly illegal and easy to prosecute, whereas the "crime if a corporation does it" are not. It's not any different than say, simple property crimes (eg. stealing or vandalism) vs white collar crimes, both of which can be perpetrated by individuals but the latter are far harder to prosecute. Stealing a candy bar is an open and shut case, especially with surveillance footage. A long firm fraud[1] is far harder to prosecute. If you buy a truckload of candy bars on credit, fail to repay the vendor, and declare bankruptcy, prosecutors are going to have a hard time prosecuting the case. Having bad business acumen isn't a crime, so on the surface nothing illegal has happened. To prove wrongdoing they must prove that you intentionally acquired goods on credit without intending to pay it back, which is far harder.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_firm_fraud

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#159

Post by cluckindan »

greyface- wrote: post #125

> Inflation is one of the most politically salient factors of this decade > Inflation has lots of causes, it's true. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL Algorithmic price fixing is certainly a not-insignificant part of the issue. But it's strange to see zero acknowledgement of the massive increase in money supply over the same time period. When doing causal analysis, we need to examine both the private sector and…

Increase in money supply only causes inflation if the money is spent on purchases of items with inflated prices (say, ferraris instead of basic food items).

When the basic food items become ferraris, people have no choice on that.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#160

Post by cogman10 »

vtashkov wrote: post #95
gmueckl wrote: post #76

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently.…

[flagged]

Well let's see, the Russian market collapsed primarily because of sanctions. The Venezuelan market also collapsed primarily due to sanctions. And of course the Cuba market collapsed primarily due to sanctions.

It seems to me that the US and other nations locking these countries out of the global market has been a pretty major factor in their current economic situation. Do you disagree? I'd also posit that it might be the case that an autocratic takeover in each of these nations has negatively impacted them.

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