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Power is being used very loosely here. The power to use violence is very difference to the "power" you get from producing something that is so good that gives y

Power is being used very loosely here. The power to use violence is very difference to the "power" you get from producing something that is so good that gives you a lot of leverage. The best way to beat a company that has market power is with other companies that fight in the same space or around it. And if there is one last man standing to reap profits from the victory, its again not necessarily bad. Market monopolies are overblown ghosts.

kristopolous 6y ago
Nonsense. The absolutely last thing a company wants to do is compete. They avoid competition at all costs. The first instinct is to buy, then shut it down, then smother it out with sheer capital, then retreat either up or downmarket. That's why when you go in to the supermarket to look at commodities, they're often owned by either 1 or 2 companies that are mutually invested in each other. You see a bunch of brands, but the capital ownership structure is almost entirely consolidated. Better products get dragged to court by existing players who try to shut them down or legislatives get greased palms for new regulations ("protected" terms). In instances where this can't happen there's cartel systems which is why the dominant grocery store changes city by city. The Austrian model of how humans work is dead wrong, how markets work is dead wrong, how capital flows is dead wrong, they're just wrong wrong wrong. That's why they never use any examples and only have theoretical exercises, because there's absolutely zero evidence for their claims. Any observation of reality would show they're incorrect in a multitude of ways at every step. That's why when you look at economics texts before the classical liberalism hubris, it is full of actual historical events, actual earnings and economic history to use as evidence and it's why the Chicago quacks had to tear those parts out, because their ideas don't work when you look at reality. If you look at evidence, their theories don't agree with it. They know this and that's why they don't use anything more than broad non-specific folksy anecdotal stories, because narrative fiction is the closest thing to reality they can get.
- nickpp 6y ago
  What a bunch of baloney. Enter any store in a free market economy and you’ll see a plethora of excellent products brought about by competition-driven innovation. Enter any store in a planned-economy country and you’ll see empty shelves.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    I completely reject your red-baiting witch-hunt assuming I'm a socialist because essentially all of mainstream modern economics have been calling the austrians out on their bullshit for almost 20 years now. The ideal "free market" requires an insane level of planning. Perfect knowledge. Perfect competition, no friction to switch loyalties, oversight of m&a to avoid the different classes of -opolies. Securing those rights are insanely complicated. It's extremely bureaucratic and has vast overhead costs. Regulatory bodies, thousands of pages of rules, committees, it's insanely mind bogglingly planned. That's why you need certified specialists to do anything in free market societies. It's planned but this planning is not based on reality which is why everything keeps going crazy all the time. The free market is a purely dogmatic ideological project, not based on any actual material evidence. So I totally reject that bogus Hoover institute style premise. These theoreticians set up a fraudulent spilt that doesn't exist, then states a false thing about them, and says 'ho take that'. It's like someone trying to prove things with astrology charts. There's an internal logic to it but that actually doesn't matter because it's all disconnected fakery to begin with.
    - nickpp 6y ago
      Nobody is talking about your "ideal free market". I saw you mention it on another threads and let me make this clear: we are only talking about the regular, imperfect, free market. Free as in free of government interference, not some other ideal. Free as in everybody is free to participate. And its not binary, either. You can have it completely free, freer, free-ish, all the way to lightly regulated, heavily regulated, planned and completely locked down. Finally, I am not talking from economists' perspective, but from that of the regular guy on the street who is just able to see policies and their result. But my conclusion is extremely simple: the freer the market is the better everybody (other than profiteers, bureaucrats and politicians) is.

kristopolous 6y ago

Nonsense. The absolutely last thing a company wants to do is compete. They avoid competition at all costs. The first instinct is to buy, then shut it down, then smother it out with sheer capital, then retreat either up or downmarket. That's why when you go in to the supermarket to look at commodities, they're often owned by either 1 or 2 companies that are mutually invested in each other. You see a bunch of brands, but the capital ownership structure is almost entirely consolidated. Better products get dragged to court by existing players who try to shut them down or legislatives get greased palms for new regulations ("protected" terms). In instances where this can't happen there's cartel systems which is why the dominant grocery store changes city by city. The Austrian model of how humans work is dead wrong, how markets work is dead wrong, how capital flows is dead wrong, they're just wrong wrong wrong. That's why they never use any examples and only have theoretical exercises, because there's absolutely zero evidence for their claims. Any observation of reality would show they're incorrect in a multitude of ways at every step. That's why when you look at economics texts before the classical liberalism hubris, it is full of actual historical events, actual earnings and economic history to use as evidence and it's why the Chicago quacks had to tear those parts out, because their ideas don't work when you look at reality. If you look at evidence, their theories don't agree with it. They know this and that's why they don't use anything more than broad non-specific folksy anecdotal stories, because narrative fiction is the closest thing to reality they can get.

nickpp 6y ago
What a bunch of baloney. Enter any store in a free market economy and you’ll see a plethora of excellent products brought about by competition-driven innovation. Enter any store in a planned-economy country and you’ll see empty shelves.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  I completely reject your red-baiting witch-hunt assuming I'm a socialist because essentially all of mainstream modern economics have been calling the austrians out on their bullshit for almost 20 years now. The ideal "free market" requires an insane level of planning. Perfect knowledge. Perfect competition, no friction to switch loyalties, oversight of m&a to avoid the different classes of -opolies. Securing those rights are insanely complicated. It's extremely bureaucratic and has vast overhead costs. Regulatory bodies, thousands of pages of rules, committees, it's insanely mind bogglingly planned. That's why you need certified specialists to do anything in free market societies. It's planned but this planning is not based on reality which is why everything keeps going crazy all the time. The free market is a purely dogmatic ideological project, not based on any actual material evidence. So I totally reject that bogus Hoover institute style premise. These theoreticians set up a fraudulent spilt that doesn't exist, then states a false thing about them, and says 'ho take that'. It's like someone trying to prove things with astrology charts. There's an internal logic to it but that actually doesn't matter because it's all disconnected fakery to begin with.
  - nickpp 6y ago
    Nobody is talking about your "ideal free market". I saw you mention it on another threads and let me make this clear: we are only talking about the regular, imperfect, free market. Free as in free of government interference, not some other ideal. Free as in everybody is free to participate. And its not binary, either. You can have it completely free, freer, free-ish, all the way to lightly regulated, heavily regulated, planned and completely locked down. Finally, I am not talking from economists' perspective, but from that of the regular guy on the street who is just able to see policies and their result. But my conclusion is extremely simple: the freer the market is the better everybody (other than profiteers, bureaucrats and politicians) is.