Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by CPLX » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #197

CPLX wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite the botfly score of an 83% LLM poorly auto-generated article Can you explain what this comment means? This article is the personal writing of Matt Stoller, the most prominent writer on issues of monopoly and anti-trust. What do you think it is?

removed due to obligatory disclosure liability

And there’s some reason I should believe the assessment of some random LLM algorithm is more reliable than my own in trusting that I am reading a guy who I’ve met and talked to a couple times, who writes in a specific style and responds to people on Twitter every day, speaks in public regularly, and has been a prominent blogger with a consistent level of output for about 20 years?

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

#202

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

enavari wrote: post #94

llm_trw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crime stats and polling of people’s perception of crime show this as clearly the wrong approach for instance. The only crime stat you can trust is murder and that's because bodies can't be hidden (easily). Everything else gets swept under the rug. When I wanted to report my car broken into I was hung up on three times because of a poor quality line, which was fine before I told them what I was calling for. When I we…

One need only download a community based self reporting app like "citizen" to see how much crime really exist.. It's more than you'd like know. Like the previous poster said, not everything is reported.

I'm sure apps like this are targeted towards an already paranoid and crime-obsessed demographic, and they're going to be full of false positives. Not sure you can take that sample as representative.

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

#203

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #183

uoaei wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, in the case of crime there are so many more vicarious anecdotes. If people were only allowed to discuss crimes that they were personally victim to, we would not be under the impression that crime is worse than ever.

When I have to spend 10 minutes finding a store employee to unlock a case for me to buy underwear and socks at Target when I didn't have to five years ago, I conclude that crime has gotten worse. When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he tou…

> When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he touches them, it is perfectly valid to assume that crime is worse.

How many videos have you seen on the Internet of stores just calmly going about business with no shoplifting going on? The number of videos on the Internet is not an indication of any overall trend. The stuff you're seeing makes it onto YouTube because they are outliers.

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

#204

Post by lotsoweiners » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

mperham wrote: post #175

chii wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there was shortages of everything in the USSR. What shortages are there in the US?

Try to get an appointment to see a doctor. Food deserts.

> Try to get an appointment to see a doctor

Done this literally dozens of times over the past couple of years for myself, kids, and wife and have never had an issue. Even been offered appointments same or next day. Am I missing something?

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

#205

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #193

ghaff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generalizations are always only somewhat true. But what you're probably seeing is a reaction to the end of a period when, assuming at least a pulse and some vague familiarity with computers (and maybe some ability to navigate tech interviews), you could walk out of a job on Friday and have multiple offers within a week. This was basically never the norm with most professional jobs that could take months of job-huntin…

> you could walk out of a job on Friday and have multiple offers within a week. This was basically never the norm with most professional jobs that could take months of job-hunting with no guarantee of a higher salary or not needing to move. This was never really the -norm- in tech either. Yes, a small number of very talented, very well-connected software engineers with well-known schools or companies on their resume,…

Totally fair. But that was the narrative. And, yeah, there's been a shift from the "narrative" and I have three "full-time" jobs to I can't get a new job offer in spite of thousands of applications but that was never really the norm in either case.

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

#206

Post by pessimizer » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #189

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…

> That’s an example of why the nihilism of MAGA is so appealing. The world is collapsing around many people. And this is what I don't get about current US politics. MAGA = Republicans. The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. The Republican party is the party of elite businessmen lording over the working class. The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling…

You shouldn't confuse your stereotypes of people for actual people.

> The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The Republican party is half the country.

"Demographic data compiled in the 2016 and 2020 elections showed that the top 40 percent of income earners preferred the Democratic candidate for president (Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden) over the Republican (Donald Trump), signifying a sizable coalition shift from where the party was in the previous decade."

https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-being-party-rich-could-co...

"Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,00 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress. The above numbers incidentally come from the Internal Revenue Service, via Bloomberg, and are likely to be more reliable than if they came from Project Veritas via theblaze.com."

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/democrats-rich-par...

> The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling rural communities and turning them into slums.

All of them?

"For decades, the Republicans were seen as the party of big business. Their support for low taxes and light regulation was manna to executives eager to raise profits and avoid government entanglements, and chief executives and big companies were reliable funders of Republicans up and down the ballot.

"Mr. Trump has frayed those bonds. Four years ago, few major chief executives supported Mr. Trump during his first campaign. And throughout his time in the White House, executives from many of the company’s biggest brands publicly sparred with the president on everything from gun control to climate change to immigration.

"'I can’t remember a time when the business community has spoken out so strongly in opposition to an administration on so many important issues,' said Rich Lesser, chief executive of Boston Consulting Group."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/business/republicans-busi...

> Is the Culture War so important/motivating to these people that they are willing to help implement their own economic destruction?

This is the culture war. You're doing it right now.

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

#207

Post by CPLX » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:10 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #173

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote would be saying that some individual over on 4th Street feels that things aren't that great. "Consumer sentiment" (or whatever name) is actually a statistic. So now you're at two statistics, one that measures economic activity in jobs and output, and the other that measures peoples' intuitive feel of the economy. I think the gap between them might be that peoples' confidence was shaken by inflation reignitin…

But polls show that around of population are flat out wrong on certain objective measures, like GDP, the S&P 500 index, and the unemployment rate[1]. If they can't get basic factual questions right, why should we put much stock in their "intuitive feel of the economy"? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll...

Guys this isn’t that complicated.

Basically every commercial interaction you have these days involves someone trying to cheat you, with basically no way to find recourse to human understanding or help.

It’s every day, every time you interact with a corporation as a consumer. It fucking sucks profoundly and people are completely exhausted by it.

Have you really not noticed?

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

#208

Post by megaman821 » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #134

detourdog wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren’t invalid things to drive a markets costs. I would say modern building codes that are used to ensure safety standards and accessibility are true drivers of cost. Achieving new standards without a cost increase is unrealistic. Older higher quality doors need to be replaced with inferior quality doors that have UL stickers.

I don't believe these changes can drive such an absurd increase in housing costs.

Structures do cost more. This is mostly increases in labor and code compliance costs. In hot markets the structure cost is dwarfed by the land cost though. There is only so much prime real estate available. That won't stop techies from trying to build a house in a factory to bring down prices, even though that makes little sense.

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

#209

Post by shakow » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #104

llm_trw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crime stats and polling of people’s perception of crime show this as clearly the wrong approach for instance. The only crime stat you can trust is murder and that's because bodies can't be hidden (easily). Everything else gets swept under the rug. When I wanted to report my car broken into I was hung up on three times because of a poor quality line, which was fine before I told them what I was calling for. When I we…

But this hasn't changed over decades. Policing never was 100% effective and crime was always underreported. Yet if you ask people it's crime getting worse YoY.

But as long as the stats are not reliable, that's unknown territory. Maybe the police is getting more lazier, maybe less, maybe there are less people reporting because it is seen as useless, maybe there are more because they get tired of it, one can simply not get a picture independently of where the trend is going.

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

#210

Post by fallingknife » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 5:27 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #203

fallingknife wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I have to spend 10 minutes finding a store employee to unlock a case for me to buy underwear and socks at Target when I didn't have to five years ago, I conclude that crime has gotten worse. When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he tou…

> When I see videos on the internet all the time of criminals just walking into stores and grabbing whatever they want while the security guard looks on and does nothing because the police will side with the criminal if he touches them, it is perfectly valid to assume that crime is worse. How many videos have you seen on the Internet of stores just calmly going about business with no shoplifting going on? The number…

Why have I only started seeing these outliers in the last few years? Also, the worst part of the videos isn't that they happen, but that they are allowed to happen. If the criminals weren't calmly going about their business without even wearing a mask and instead running from the security guard it wouldn't be so frustrating. If the news stories had a mugshot of the police arresting them quickly since their face is all over the internet it wouldn't be so infuriating. If the police didn't allow the criminals to run open air fencing operations right outside BART stations, I wouldn't be this mad.