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How America became uncompetitive and unequal

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Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#41

Post by crdoconnor »

spindritf wrote: post #36
crdoconnor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are currently shortages of another basic good: housing. It's a mistake to think that our economies are any the less planned. Fraud may be policed at the low end, but at the high end (servicer fraud; pension rip offs) it is rife and largely unpoliced.

Shortage of housing in the US is only local, and it's a feature, not a bug. Voters want a shortage so that they can buy a house in a "good neighbourhood" to move away from poor people. It's almost never explicitly stated that way but that's the way the votes go. Whole new towns are incorporated around the US to avoid poor school districts. People impose new taxes on themselves, something otherwise unheard of, to do t…

>Proposition B passed in SF just this month

Preventing the erection of yet more high rise condos will do nothing to solve San Francisco's acute shortage of affordable housing.

Those who care most about affordable housing in SF are, in any case, leaving in droves or have already left.

>This is the system working as intended

Hardly.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#42

Post by grondilu »

brazzy wrote: post #7
grondilu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is simple : economic freedom. If companies have the right to merge, it's not because "right-wing free-market ideologues" think it is best for the economy, it's because it is their business and they are free to organize it as they will. Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better", an…

You could not possibly be more wrong. Monpolies are the exact opposite of economic freedom and amount to a planned economy, except the plan is not even nominally for the good of everyone.

I have not used the word monopoly and was merely talking about the right for people to work together. Do you have anything against that?

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#43

Post by grondilu »

dougabug wrote: post #10
grondilu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is simple : economic freedom. If companies have the right to merge, it's not because "right-wing free-market ideologues" think it is best for the economy, it's because it is their business and they are free to organize it as they will. Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better", an…

Corporations are legal fictions. They exist through the power and authority of the State, their contracts are enacted and enforced through agents of the Courts. Corporations are manifestly not free to organize as they will. Is it economic freedom to have one choice for Internet broadband? For healthcare? Unregulated monopolies should supply us with food, water, power, and all other essential utilities/needs? Welcome…

> Corporations are legal fictions. They exist through the power and authority of the State, their contracts are enacted and enforced through agents of the Courts.

When I enter a shop there are a few things I can not do. I can't steal, threaten the staff or set the place in fire for instance. That does not mean that the concept of a shop does not exist. Corporations are nothing but an association of people working together and/or sharing the ownership of means of production. The fact that the Law puts a frame around this organisation does not stop it from existing. The concept preexists to what Law says it is.

If you deny it it's probably because that suits your political views so I don't have much hope in changing your mind about it.

PS. Someone who has a job also makes a contract that is enforced by the State, so do you think employment is a legal fiction as well?

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#44

Post by spindritf »

crdoconnor wrote: post #41
spindritf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shortage of housing in the US is only local, and it's a feature, not a bug. Voters want a shortage so that they can buy a house in a "good neighbourhood" to move away from poor people. It's almost never explicitly stated that way but that's the way the votes go. Whole new towns are incorporated around the US to avoid poor school districts. People impose new taxes on themselves, something otherwise unheard of, to do t…

>Proposition B passed in SF just this month Preventing the erection of yet more high rise condos will do nothing to solve San Francisco's acute shortage of affordable housing. Those who care most about affordable housing in SF are, in any case, leaving in droves or have already left. >This is the system working as intended Hardly.

What I meant to say is that voters don't actually want affordable housing because then poor people could move in next door defeating the whole scheme. This is why limiting new developments is system working as intended, as its constituents want it to work.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#45

Post by watwut »

dnautics wrote: post #32
dmitri1981 wrote: post #27

Hospitals by their very nature are anti-competitive. There is no way that you as a patient can shop around. You do not have the necessary knowledge to compare the treatments, evaluate the options and decide on what represents the best value.

that's generally not true. For most procedures done in hospitals there is nearly no reason why patients can't shop around. With basically the only exception being the ER, for true emergencies. Moreover, even if NOT ALL patients shop around, say, even just 10%, there would be enough momentum going to put pressure on doctors to improve quality of care and decrease costs.

It is hard to shop around because prices are not transparent. It is very hard to find out in advance how much exactly will everything cost you. You can get some partial information (how much they charge for room), but they will not tell you in advance about all the tests you will have to pay. Then there are small item hospitals charge a lot for: band-aids for example. Unless you know a lot about healthcare system, you will not be able to guess all of them.

Plus, hospitals are not in habit of committing to agreed upon price in advance. So, even if you shop around the amount they will charge you still can be much different then the one you calculated.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#46

Post by leaveyou »

spindritf wrote: post #29
leaveyou wrote: post #14

Consolidation is also favored by cheap money (yes, back to money monopoly thingy). Above some threshold and especially if you are in good relations with a bank, it is far easier to buy your competitors and dismantle them by selling their assets than to compete with them. It's ironic how in the failed communist centralized economies, the economic policy was dictated by "elected" nomenklatura and it was BAD, while in t…

It's ironic how in the failed communist centralized economies, the economic policy was dictated by "elected" nomenklatura and it was BAD It wasn't judged as bad because of nomenklatura, or rigged elections. Few people care about these. It was bad because you couldn't get basic goods. There were shortages of sugar and toiler paper. Not war-time shortages, decades after the war. Which is why the current system will con…

"It was bad because you couldn't get basic goods". True. But the current system is (even more?) problematic because you can't get basic JOBS. And not only that but a fundamental part of the current system is the accelerating race of getting rid of jobs. And not only that but now, unlike ever before, the system uses the best tools against jobs: software & automation.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#47

Post by brazzy »

grondilu wrote: post #42
brazzy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could not possibly be more wrong. Monpolies are the exact opposite of economic freedom and amount to a planned economy, except the plan is not even nominally for the good of everyone.

I have not used the word monopoly and was merely talking about the right for people to work together. Do you have anything against that ?

You said

> Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better"

Sounds like you're advocating that all mergers should be allowed, even if they produce monopolies, and that not having many players would be OK.

The notion that regulation which disallows two billion-dollar companies with thousands of employees to merge because they'd afterwards dominate an important market has anything to do with "the right for people to work together" is somewhere between fundamentalist and disingenuous.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#48

Post by grondilu »

brazzy wrote: post #47
grondilu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not used the word monopoly and was merely talking about the right for people to work together. Do you have anything against that ?

You said > Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better" Sounds like you're advocating that all mergers should be allowed, even if they produce monopolies, and that not having many players would be OK. The notion that regulation which disallows two billion-dollar companies with thousands of empl…

If a company ends up being the only one providing a product or service on a market, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as other companies are not prohibited to enter the market if they are capable to. And I repeat : you have no right to prevent people from working together if they want to. It's none of your business.

If you're upset with a company dominating a market, just create your own company to compete with it.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#49

Post by ivansavz »

grondilu wrote: post #3
ivansavz wrote: post #2

This opinion piece articulates something I've felt for a long time... consolidation is the biggest problem in America right now, scratch that, in the World. One thing that I can't comprehend is how right-wing free-market ideologues can get behind all the consolidation. Cant they see that consolidation is just like communism? Only a competitive market with many players can ensure progress continues.

The answer is simple : economic freedom. If companies have the right to merge, it's not because "right-wing free-market ideologues" think it is best for the economy, it's because it is their business and they are free to organize it as they will. Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better", an…

> The answer is simple : economic freedom.

I'm all for freedom, and that is precisely why I'm opposed to consolidation. There are a couple of components required to make the free market work: (1) freedom for companies to grow [--> efficiency], (2) freedom for new companies to enter the market [--> competition], and (3) freedom for customers to choose from different offerings [--> competition].

Consolidation is all about (1) at the expense of (2) and (3).

To clarify, when I said "communism" I meant "central planning" (not totalitarianism), which is what happens when a single corporation controls most of a market. Apologies for using this emotionally-charged term loosely.

> prohibiting companies to merge

I'm not sure what wing that puts me in, but I think we should prohibit large companies from merging and also dismantle existing large companies as well. The way I see it, a world with many small and medium-sized companies will run much smoother than one with a single large company. Specifically, keeping the chain of command short (height of the corporate pyramid < 7) will ensure informed decisions are made (instead of decisions based on office politics, and personal vision---the corporate version of "I know better"). Except for some exceptions (e.g. you need a pretty big company to manufacture planes) this would be possible.

Re: How America became uncompetitive and unequal

#50

Post by brazzy »

grondilu wrote: post #48
brazzy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said > Saying that only "many players can ensure progress continues" and thus prohibiting companies to merge is interfering with economic freedom in the name of "I know better" Sounds like you're advocating that all mergers should be allowed, even if they produce monopolies, and that not having many players would be OK. The notion that regulation which disallows two billion-dollar companies with thousands of empl…

If a company ends up being the only one providing a product or service on a market, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as other companies are not prohibited to enter the market if they are capable to. And I repeat : you have no right to prevent people from working together if they want to. It's none of your business. If you're upset with a company dominating a market, just create your own company to compete wi…

Yes, there is a lot wrong with that, as there are often significant inherent barriers to enter a market, and lots of things an incumbent can do to hinder competition, not all of which can be made illegal.

And a good government has every right to prevent this situation, that is exactly its business.

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