4 ms·

Abuse of a dominant position in a market is already forbidden in many countries. I guess that those monopolies would be split to ensure that the market is comp

by ebalit 6y ago

Abuse of a dominant position in a market is already forbidden in many countries. I guess that those monopolies would be split to ensure that the market is competitive.

snidane 6y ago
First, some monopolies are monopolies forever - network and utility monopolies. Second, you still have to deal with aggregate monopolies - ie when one societal class has monopoly pricing power over another. You cannot break up these as they are already broken up. The prime example is real estate and land market. Landlords have monopolistic pricing power over tenants. Price for rent is not governed by landlord's costs but by what the tenant can bear. If you inject UBI to the economy then tenants can suddenly bear more and landlords can and will rise rent prices convincing others that their cost increased so it's justified. It's not the inflation of produced goods which would kill VAT or similarly funded UBI but rent and monopoly good inflation which by definition can't be competed away. Therefore before you can implement UBI you have to deal with monopolies first. Hint1: Fix it by implementing monopoly based taxes such as Land Value Tax and natural resource auctions. You will raise more than you need and will also abolish labor taxes stiffling productivity. Hint2: Georgists (economical movement after guy named Henry George in 19th century - who coined the term "Progressive") were discussing UBI ideas already pretty extensively and understood these implications. They realized the monopoly problem and made it central to their teaching. Only instead of UBI they called it a Citizen's Dividend.
- fastball 6y ago
  > First, some monopolies are monopolies forever - network and utility monopolies. Could you expand on this a bit more? Network and utility companies can clearly be broken up. The actual infra can be owned by municipalities. > Price for rent is not governed by landlord's costs but by what the tenant can bear. Citation needed. There is competition amongst landlords as long as housing supply is not severely limited. If supply is limited, that is a failing of zoning policy. The flat I just started renting a few months ago was priced on supply-and-demand, not on how much I earn (otherwise the landlord did a pretty terrible job of gouging me because relative to my income I got a good deal). You can look to Japan as a country where zoning policy isn't totally nuts like it is in parts of the US. We are dealing with monopolies, the current administration notwithstanding. Andrew Yang in particular has a number of thoughts on these issue: https://www.yang2020.com/blog/regulating-technology-firms-in-the-21st-century/ https://www.yang2020.com/blog/regulating-technology-firms-in... https://www.yang2020.com/policies/net-neutrality/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/net-neutrality/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/
  - snidane 6y ago
    You can have competition among landlords but you can't provide the key ingredient of which there is fixed supply - land. No more land + people moving in = price only goes up. > The flat I just started renting a few months ago was priced on supply-and-demand, not on how much I earn (otherwise the landlord did a pretty terrible job of gouging me because relative to my income I got a good deal). A single example doesn't prove or disprove anything. You haven't mentioned cases for example of many others who are living on level of bare sustainability in the same city. You cannot apply micro analysis to understand this problem by citing individual cases. You need macro analysis for this. Zoning is not enough of a solution because it doesn't deal with the underlying problem - city land supply. Maybe tech workers will no longer need to live in the cities after covid crisis. That still doesn't make it a casr for the rest of the society and cannot serve as a basis for ignoring the issue. Cherry-picking only some monopolies which are currently under scrutiny doesn't fix the problem either. Land monopoly is the biggest one out there and is not mentioned. Fixing the others without considering this one is merely applying a bandaid on a blister while the patient's artery is bleeding.
    - fastball 6y ago
      The nice thing about land is that modern technology allows you to stick more than one person on a piece of it. The land supply is finite. Housing supply is not.

by ebalit 6y ago

Abuse of a dominant position in a market is already forbidden in many countries. I guess that those monopolies would be split to ensure that the market is competitive.

snidane 6y ago

First, some monopolies are monopolies forever - network and utility monopolies. Second, you still have to deal with aggregate monopolies - ie when one societal class has monopoly pricing power over another. You cannot break up these as they are already broken up. The prime example is real estate and land market. Landlords have monopolistic pricing power over tenants. Price for rent is not governed by landlord's costs but by what the tenant can bear. If you inject UBI to the economy then tenants can suddenly bear more and landlords can and will rise rent prices convincing others that their cost increased so it's justified. It's not the inflation of produced goods which would kill VAT or similarly funded UBI but rent and monopoly good inflation which by definition can't be competed away. Therefore before you can implement UBI you have to deal with monopolies first. Hint1: Fix it by implementing monopoly based taxes such as Land Value Tax and natural resource auctions. You will raise more than you need and will also abolish labor taxes stiffling productivity. Hint2: Georgists (economical movement after guy named Henry George in 19th century - who coined the term "Progressive") were discussing UBI ideas already pretty extensively and understood these implications. They realized the monopoly problem and made it central to their teaching. Only instead of UBI they called it a Citizen's Dividend.

fastball 6y ago
> First, some monopolies are monopolies forever - network and utility monopolies. Could you expand on this a bit more? Network and utility companies can clearly be broken up. The actual infra can be owned by municipalities. > Price for rent is not governed by landlord's costs but by what the tenant can bear. Citation needed. There is competition amongst landlords as long as housing supply is not severely limited. If supply is limited, that is a failing of zoning policy. The flat I just started renting a few months ago was priced on supply-and-demand, not on how much I earn (otherwise the landlord did a pretty terrible job of gouging me because relative to my income I got a good deal). You can look to Japan as a country where zoning policy isn't totally nuts like it is in parts of the US. We are dealing with monopolies, the current administration notwithstanding. Andrew Yang in particular has a number of thoughts on these issue: https://www.yang2020.com/blog/regulating-technology-firms-in-the-21st-century/ https://www.yang2020.com/blog/regulating-technology-firms-in... https://www.yang2020.com/policies/net-neutrality/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/net-neutrality/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/zoning/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/
- snidane 6y ago
  You can have competition among landlords but you can't provide the key ingredient of which there is fixed supply - land. No more land + people moving in = price only goes up. > The flat I just started renting a few months ago was priced on supply-and-demand, not on how much I earn (otherwise the landlord did a pretty terrible job of gouging me because relative to my income I got a good deal). A single example doesn't prove or disprove anything. You haven't mentioned cases for example of many others who are living on level of bare sustainability in the same city. You cannot apply micro analysis to understand this problem by citing individual cases. You need macro analysis for this. Zoning is not enough of a solution because it doesn't deal with the underlying problem - city land supply. Maybe tech workers will no longer need to live in the cities after covid crisis. That still doesn't make it a casr for the rest of the society and cannot serve as a basis for ignoring the issue. Cherry-picking only some monopolies which are currently under scrutiny doesn't fix the problem either. Land monopoly is the biggest one out there and is not mentioned. Fixing the others without considering this one is merely applying a bandaid on a blister while the patient's artery is bleeding.
  - fastball 6y ago
    The nice thing about land is that modern technology allows you to stick more than one person on a piece of it. The land supply is finite. Housing supply is not.