I think in many areas the name of the game is to move the entire market to a place where no real competition is possible. Housing in most parts of the world is a good example, there’s no reason prices for housing should’ve gone up 300-400 % above inflation as we really haven’t run out of space in most places, yet here we are. I have a hard time believing this is just the outcome of unfortunate market conditions, it seems quite engineered to me.
Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
21–30 of 457 posts
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#22>Today, Verisign is the single most profitable company in the stock market, a great example of an economic termite
This is just blatantly false. VeriSign is in fact the 1215th most profitable company in the stock market [1]. By operating margin, it's 155th [2]. I find it hard to give an article much credit when I can't even get past the introduction without having to comb through citationless false/misleading statements.
[1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/most-profitable-companies/pag...
[2] https://companiesmarketcap.com/top-companies-by-operating-ma...
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#23I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…
The answer is simple. Some consumers are feeling terrible and they are vocal about it. People mostly are ok and not talking about it.
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#24I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…
Not that economics is a credible science, but you’re conflating talking heads with economists. Talking heads exist to peddle the agenda of the elites who own them.
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha, DMV… I just moved to North Carolina, and the next available appointment at the DMV to change the address on my driver license is in September (it’s beginning of June as I am writing this). When I moved the last time in a different state - the appointment to change my address on my driver license was same week and took about 15 mins, most of which I spent trying to get a decent picture. So I “know” it doesn’t ta…
Doesnt that likely demonstrate insufficient resource/capacity rather than OPs point that there are too many bureaucrats?
Maybe there are too many bureaucrats that all the expenses are bloated and funding payroll of unproductive gov workers.
Personally ive found that to be more true in most countries.
Civil service/Gov workers get tons of new unnecessary roles with bloated titles for departments that barely do anything, just to maintain a cycle of promotion, to keep the gov workforce “motivated”.
Not that i disagree that United Health is price gouging that there are way too many corrupt unnatural monopolistic companies preventing america from growing fast and allowing innovation to take place.
I think both things are true at the same time.
Talk to any gov department and they’ll often tell you, the budgeting is structured in a horrible way that it encourages them to do wasteful spending, they must keep spending entirety of their “budget” to retain a similar sized budget next year, “use it or lose it”, to avoid going through hassle of convincing politicians to re-boost budget later, departments resort to wasting money with meaningless expenses just to retain their budgets…
Extrapolate that to a gov that spends more than a trillion dollars annually at times and this is a disastrous level of wasteful spending.
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#26Adobe
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#27Termites or some kind of blood-sucking parasite? Something bigger than fleas, maybe ticks? The effect is different, and ones are meant for i.e. buildings and the other for living thing.
I see that as taxes, imposed by some private entity instead of the government, and without potential benefits for you as some taxes may be.
And if is that role, there are more direct imposed players that somewhat suck money to let the system work, starting with some banking and insurance.
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#28Re LinkedIn as an example of an economic termite:
It's certainly true that LinkedIn is the go to for white collar professionals seeking to make their resumes visible passively to recruiters. But isn't life still easier with LinkedIn than in the before times, when recruiters would dig deep to get folks' phone numbers and then have to call each of those people individually? (I think the modern equivalent would be email addresses.)
It's true that LinkedIn makes recruiting much easier to scale to a mass market. And it's also true that it has a monopoly on that scaling for professional employees. But is it fair to call them an economic termite when it's still possible to do sourcing in an admittedly clunky and old fashioned way? Just because they have a monopoly on scaled recruiting doesn't mean that they hold all the cards the way Linde (also in the profile) would in the gas market. This is particularly borne out by the existence of Indeed or Stack Overflow as options for posting your resume for recruiting.
Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha, DMV… I just moved to North Carolina, and the next available appointment at the DMV to change the address on my driver license is in September (it’s beginning of June as I am writing this). When I moved the last time in a different state - the appointment to change my address on my driver license was same week and took about 15 mins, most of which I spent trying to get a decent picture. So I “know” it doesn’t ta…
Doesnt that likely demonstrate insufficient resource/capacity rather than OPs point that there are too many bureaucrats?
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Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
#30I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…
Welath inequality means many companies just dont need the majority of consumers. Big pharma typifies his by increasing prices till they can just get a few whales to buy.
The rental market and the.dojs anti trust is the same: landlorsa making money by limiting units to just the more wealth renters and leaving units empty.
This is just qhat.happens wgen regulatots simply stop enforcing a minimum level of social goods.