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Interesting how the dominant narrative in NYC a year ago was "Uber is making taxi drivers commit suicide", and now we're seeing that revenues are down only 10%,

by tmh79 7y ago

Interesting how the dominant narrative in NYC a year ago was "Uber is making taxi drivers commit suicide", and now we're seeing that revenues are down only 10%, and the real grift is from the finance guys extracting all the value in the medallion/transpo market. I think we're seeing a huge confluence of relatively independent factors coming together through the form of "private equity" that are going to make like much more challenging for the bottom 80% of the population. PE fueling a boom and essentially usury in taxi medallions. Firms like blackrock and other large REITs buying up an insane amount of homes, jacking up rents and evicting people. Essential services like 911 dispatch and ambulances being taken over by PE firms and squeezed to the point of either uselessness (dispatch) or usurous practices (ambulance billing). I believe in markets and capitalism, but it's hard for me to see these changes and not sympathize with the new wave socialists in the US.

gridlockd 7y ago
> I believe in markets and capitalism, but it's hard for me to see these changes and not sympathize with the new wave socialists in the US. What's happening isn't due to capitalism. It's all symptoms of monetary policy. Prices for real estate are driven up by cheap money, not just PE. Then, when the bubble pops, everyone gets a bailout by the nanny state. If the market shows sign of weakness, no more interest rate hikes. Risk has been eliminated. The party has to go on at all costs, because if interest rates normalize, asset prices will tank, debt will become unservicable, mortgages will default, 401Ks will be wiped out...
ip26 7y ago
The sad part is capitalism can probably help solve these problems, but the professed "ardent free market capitalists" are too devoted to the religion to consider it. They conveniently ignore that unconscious people can't perform price discovery, forget that one of the core tenants of a functioning free market is free flow of pricing information, deny the very existence of externalities. Essentially, there is a list of conditions required for the invisible hand to function well, but they seem uninterested, even hostile, to attempting to establish those conditions. I struggle to understand how they get so out of whack with even the very basics. Do they chose their preferred outcome and work backwards? Are they beholden/captured? Did deifying the free market close the door to tweaking markets to adjust outcomes (a deity is always right)?
- pm90 7y ago
  > I struggle to understand how they get so out of whack with even the very basics. Do they chose their preferred outcome and work backwards? Are they beholden/captured? Did deifying the free market close the door to tweaking markets to adjust outcomes (a deity is always right)? It isn't that surprising when you see that the people that usually espouse such views aren't doing it from a good faith perspective, or are simply hopelessly naive. The people that do benefit from such policies (namely the companies that benefit due to regulation) then fund these people, leading to narratives that are totally out of whack with reality. Free market capitalism is great when you don't have control over a market and want a fair chance to take over it. Once you do control the market, it becomes your most dangerous foe (any group of smart enough people with enough seed capital and more efficient production has a chance of destroying the company you built over lifetimes).

by tmh79 7y ago

gridlockd 7y ago

> I believe in markets and capitalism, but it's hard for me to see these changes and not sympathize with the new wave socialists in the US. What's happening isn't due to capitalism. It's all symptoms of monetary policy. Prices for real estate are driven up by cheap money, not just PE. Then, when the bubble pops, everyone gets a bailout by the nanny state. If the market shows sign of weakness, no more interest rate hikes. Risk has been eliminated. The party has to go on at all costs, because if interest rates normalize, asset prices will tank, debt will become unservicable, mortgages will default, 401Ks will be wiped out...

ip26 7y ago

The sad part is capitalism can probably help solve these problems, but the professed "ardent free market capitalists" are too devoted to the religion to consider it. They conveniently ignore that unconscious people can't perform price discovery, forget that one of the core tenants of a functioning free market is free flow of pricing information, deny the very existence of externalities. Essentially, there is a list of conditions required for the invisible hand to function well, but they seem uninterested, even hostile, to attempting to establish those conditions. I struggle to understand how they get so out of whack with even the very basics. Do they chose their preferred outcome and work backwards? Are they beholden/captured? Did deifying the free market close the door to tweaking markets to adjust outcomes (a deity is always right)?

pm90 7y ago
> I struggle to understand how they get so out of whack with even the very basics. Do they chose their preferred outcome and work backwards? Are they beholden/captured? Did deifying the free market close the door to tweaking markets to adjust outcomes (a deity is always right)? It isn't that surprising when you see that the people that usually espouse such views aren't doing it from a good faith perspective, or are simply hopelessly naive. The people that do benefit from such policies (namely the companies that benefit due to regulation) then fund these people, leading to narratives that are totally out of whack with reality. Free market capitalism is great when you don't have control over a market and want a fair chance to take over it. Once you do control the market, it becomes your most dangerous foe (any group of smart enough people with enough seed capital and more efficient production has a chance of destroying the company you built over lifetimes).