5 ms·

> It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local caf

> It’s disingenuous to do faux ignorance by acting like you don’t know what I roughly meant when I said everyone. You know I wasn’t talking about your local cafe. Or even a $10M/year company. Then articulate your point more clearly. Sure, many the American megacorps are using the government for their own sake. That's exactly proving why US is such a crony state, where big corps are protected from competition by a huge apparatus of bureaucracy. What's your point? If they use the government it's not the government's fault? Government is literally a mean of establishing oligopolies and shifting the bargaining balance from people to corporations.

coliveira 7y ago
You point is moot because there is no capitalist society where big companies will not interfere with government. If government is too big, they will lobby the government. If government is too small/inexistent, they will run monopolies by direct financial control and other "standard" practices: buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  > buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence. You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmful than those leveraged by the allowance of interventions.
  - skinnymuch 7y ago
    I gave the Diapers.com parent company example elsewhere. They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really? I don’t think they did.
    - ernst_klim 7y ago
      > They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really? So they've provided a worse service? I'm fine with it, if it means lower prices. Of course they had a choice. And not only "to sell or become worthless", but also invent or innovate, as Amazon did, when it swallowed a huge chunk of Walmart's pie. I don't know if Amazon is good or bad, neither myself nor anybody around ever used it, but if its service would not be good enough, any competitor could easily use it to conquer the market (as Amazon itself did), until Amazon would protect itself via regulatory capture.
skinnymuch 7y ago
> Then articulate your point more clearly. I don’t buy that you didn’t know I didn’t mean everyone because of articulation. As if such a basic point needs to be specified so much.

coliveira 7y ago

You point is moot because there is no capitalist society where big companies will not interfere with government. If government is too big, they will lobby the government. If government is too small/inexistent, they will run monopolies by direct financial control and other "standard" practices: buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence.

ernst_klim 7y ago
> buying out competitors, collusion, threats of violence. You can't buy a competitor if he don't want to be sold. Neither can you threat somebody with violence if the government does its job. I don't even comprehend how the absence of interventionism presume allowance of such violent measures. Don't confuse violence with "non-competitive practices". The latter are seldom harmful, or at the very least much less harmful than those leveraged by the allowance of interventions.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  I gave the Diapers.com parent company example elsewhere. They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really? I don’t think they did.
  - ernst_klim 7y ago
    > They were doomed with Amazon’s relentless price cutting and marketing. Either they sell or they’ll become worthless. You can say they have a choice, but did they really? So they've provided a worse service? I'm fine with it, if it means lower prices. Of course they had a choice. And not only "to sell or become worthless", but also invent or innovate, as Amazon did, when it swallowed a huge chunk of Walmart's pie. I don't know if Amazon is good or bad, neither myself nor anybody around ever used it, but if its service would not be good enough, any competitor could easily use it to conquer the market (as Amazon itself did), until Amazon would protect itself via regulatory capture.

skinnymuch 7y ago

> Then articulate your point more clearly. I don’t buy that you didn’t know I didn’t mean everyone because of articulation. As if such a basic point needs to be specified so much.