711–720 of 726 posts
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> a strange take and a strawman. Monopolies are still subject to the Law of Supply and Demand, whether they are good or bad.
It's not a strawman, right above you said Standard Oil didn't steal anything because monopolies “don't owe [their] customer a discount.”
I never wrote anything resembling that fabrication, and it doesn't follow from your reply, either.
I would argue that the Scandinavian countries are a much better example to use than Switzerland. In contrast to Switzerland Sweden leads the world in fibre access build out (while being geographically much larger). While I haven't seen 25 G internet 10G is relatively common and 1G is the default (at around 40-50 euro per month). The model has is quite similar to Switzerland though, open access fibre infrastructure wi…
I live in Sweden, and I don’t see a fiber plan available from Telia, the biggest provider, faster than 1Gb!? https://www.telia.se/bredband/fiber And I have the 600M plan since it’s less than half the cost of 1G but still plenty fast for my needs. Where do you even find 10G??
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It's not a strawman, right above you said Standard Oil didn't steal anything because monopolies “don't owe [their] customer a discount.”
> “who cares about markets, monopolies are good” I never wrote anything resembling that fabrication, and it doesn't follow from your reply, either.
This is your quote right? Now tell me how this doesn't resemble the “fabrication” above?
And indeed it follows from my reply as well: if setting prices independently from costs is OK, then monopolies are good. Because market competition is lauded for preventing exactly that.
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Falling prices is not always indicative of a well-functioning competitive market. Rockefeller was known to deliberately lose money to undercut his competitors and put them out of business. With enough scale, a near-monopoly can provide irrational predatory pricing long enough make competitors insolvent. In between, it looks like the near monopoly is losing market share while prices drop. Without taking the larger con…
Rockefeller did not get rich by losing money. Nor did Rockefeller eliminate his competitors. He never got more than a 90% market share. SO was not tried for being a monopoly, it was tried for trying to create one. SO's market share sank during the trial, as Rockefeller's competitors learned how to compete with him. See "Titan" by Chernow. > With enough scale, a near-monopoly can provide irrational predatory pricing l…
If your claim is that someone needs to have 100% market to be anti-competitive, we’re talking past each other. I know HN can have relatively high levels of binary thinking, but the real world is more complicated and nuanced.
X doesn’t have to perpetually lose money, just long enough to put Y out of business. Modern definitions of predatory pricing did not exist at the time, but that is essentially what Standard Oil was found guilty of in their day. They can also lose market share as new markets emerge but that doesn’t undermine the monopoly argument. If I have a utility in TX and another utility opens in CA, my regulated monopoly is still intact.
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Rockefeller did not get rich by losing money. Nor did Rockefeller eliminate his competitors. He never got more than a 90% market share. SO was not tried for being a monopoly, it was tried for trying to create one. SO's market share sank during the trial, as Rockefeller's competitors learned how to compete with him. See "Titan" by Chernow. > With enough scale, a near-monopoly can provide irrational predatory pricing l…
Chernow is more of a laity source than an academic one. Fun to read, but it’s not a strong source. He tends to over emphasize the efficiency side and neglect the logistical barriers to entry and many would consider Chernows thesis incomplete. If your claim is that someone needs to have 100% market to be anti-competitive, we’re talking past each other. I know HN can have relatively high levels of binary thinking, but…
The nuance is throughout the SO anti-trust trial, SO was losing market share.
SO's main method of growing was to buy out competitors, and made them rich with SO stock.
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> “who cares about markets, monopolies are good” I never wrote anything resembling that fabrication, and it doesn't follow from your reply, either.
> As for Rockefeller being a "robber", the rise of Standard Oil resulted in the price of kerosene dropping 70%. This is your quote right? Now tell me how this doesn't resemble the “fabrication” above? And indeed it follows from my reply as well: if setting prices independently from costs is OK, then monopolies are good. Because market competition is lauded for preventing exactly that.
> if setting prices independently from costs is OK, then monopolies are good. Because market competition is lauded for preventing exactly that.
Your premise does not lead to your conclusion. It doesn't make any sense.
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Frankly, I think you're trying to poke holes in a straightforward concept. And now you've dug your heels in and you're trying to justify it. But... let's ignore opinions and interpretations... > Sony heard about Nintendo partnering up with Philips for the SNES CD expansion, so Sony made their own console This is completely inaccurate in every way possible. You even have the order of events backwards (Nintendo and Son…
That isn’t actually refuting his original argument. Just proving his example false. Then you beg the question with a bit of a straw man fallacy thrown in.
Correct. It is extremely false. And it's an extremely well documented event, as well.
> Then you beg the question with a bit of a straw man fallacy thrown in.
I expressed my opinion. I did not misrepresent that person's argument (i didn't represent it at all). As for begging the question, well, I'm not sure what you're referring to, unless you mean the intensely cut and dry sequence of historical events? In which case... well, they're so unaligned with reality that it's comical.
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> As for Rockefeller being a "robber", the rise of Standard Oil resulted in the price of kerosene dropping 70%. This is your quote right? Now tell me how this doesn't resemble the “fabrication” above? And indeed it follows from my reply as well: if setting prices independently from costs is OK, then monopolies are good. Because market competition is lauded for preventing exactly that.
I quoted "robber" in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654948 when I replied to it. I did not "fabricate" it. > if setting prices independently from costs is OK, then monopolies are good. Because market competition is lauded for preventing exactly that. Your premise does not lead to your conclusion. It doesn't make any sense.
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Living paycheck to paycheck is usually a choice: people earn a lot of money and spend it immediately. The fact that this leaves them vulnerable to misfortune doesn't mean they're poor.
While this can be true, this absolutely is not true for the majority of paycheck-to-paycheck people. You truly need to get your head out of your ass if you honestly believe this is what is causing people to be poor.
Yes, sometimes this is medical debt or other unavoidable things. But its also true that the consumtion rate is incredibly high and the savings rate is incredibly low, with US credit card industry making it easy to create huge debts.
So its simply a fact that a huge amount of people live in self imposed risky situations. Instead of an emergency fund, they think they can just open a new credit card.
So its of course not what is causing people to be poor, but what is does is that it makes many, many more people 'living on the edge' then there should be based on their actual incomes.
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Living paycheck to paycheck is usually a choice: people earn a lot of money and spend it immediately. The fact that this leaves them vulnerable to misfortune doesn't mean they're poor.
Give me a break. Most people don't have any real benefits. Healthcare costs are insane. Daycare costs are insane. Rent is insane. Car costs are insane. Insurance is insane. Grocery costs are insane. Higher education costs are insane. You sound like you are single no kids and on here with a cushy tech job and be like "those poor people just don't know how to manage their money!"
Car costs don't have to be insane. If you are smart about buying a small second hand car. Its just a reality that almost all american insanely overspend on their cars. And even reasonably poor people refuse to use buses or public transport even in places where it is possible.
> Healthcare costs are insane. Daycare costs are insane.
A huge number of people who are both healthy and don't have kids, or don't use daycare also live paycheck to paycheck.
> "those poor people just don't know how to manage their money!"
Its simply a well document fact that people insane overspend on consumtion. There is a reason the term 'house poor' exists. US culture tells everybody you need buy a house or you are failure, and that traps a lot of people. Same for cars, the overspend on cars is insane, the amount of 'poor' people that drive F-150 is off the charts, when you could get a second hand Honda Civic for 1/3 cost.
There are 1 million+ large F-150 like trucks sold in a year in the US. And we know for a fact that many of those are sold to people who will end up having payments mich higher then the recommended monthly acccount. And we know for a fact, that most people don't need these trucks.
We also know that people who have a pattern living paycheck to paycheck very often continue to do so, even as their income increases. Partly because they life-style inflated helped by the fact that as your income grows, your ability to add debt increases as well and many people see this as an oppertunity, rather then a trap.
Changing those things doesn't turn you from poor to rich, but it would mean that instead of living on the edge paycheck to paycheck with constant use of credit cards, instead you could have no credit card, an emergency fund and a savings rate of a modest 5%. There are plenty of people you can find who do this, who are worse off in terms of income then people who live paycheck to paycheck.
Its a fair argument to make that the US make this to hard, specially for people with kids or people who are sick, but those don't account for 30%+ of the population. But to ignore all individual choice is equally silly and infantilizing. People prefering F-150 over retirment savings is just a fact of life, and its not elitist to point it out.