8 ms·

That America and other countries have allowed the consolidation of media companies to such a degree is a large part of the reason why we're having so many probl

That America and other countries have allowed the consolidation of media companies to such a degree is a large part of the reason why we're having so many problems today.

duxup 6y ago
How do you connect that to 'why we're having so many problems today'?
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  Not the op, but I think any consolation of media will make people care less about their neighborhood and more about the world, which might be a good and a bad thing. Bad in that local news are often a tiny bit more actionable and social building, and good in that it makes progress faster. I remember when I moved to another country and was absolutely shocked that they had local restaurant reviews on the news channels. Really appreciated it instead of all the doom and gloom. I visited quite a lot of them!
  - dfmooreqqq 6y ago
    To be fair, lots of local nightly news shows in America have local restaurant reviews. My parents live outside of Asheville, NC, and their local nightly news on all the broadcast channels carries restaurant reviews and lots of "around town" happenings.
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      Have they ever aired a negative review?
- medlazik 6y ago
  It's the #1 reason why so many people have been voting against their own interest for the past 20 years
  - astura 6y ago
    Can you explain?
    - medlazik 6y ago
      The deregulation frenzy that started with Reagan/Thatcher and all over the world is responsible for the insane inequalities we have today. The billionaire owned media has a neoliberal agenda against regulation. Of course they don't have to call journalists to tell them what to say, they recruit heads of HR who recruit neoliberal journalists/editorialists. 90% of people haven't seen their wages progressing that much in 20 years, yet they keep voting for the Biden/Trump/Macron/Bolsonaro of the world whom appeal is 100% created by the media. Deregulation is also responsible for leaders doing nothing about global warming and so many other things that make the world a particularly shitty place right now.
    - saiya-jin 6y ago
      Not OP but generally poorer folks in US especially in rural parts vote for right which protects much more the rich. Its sold to them for generations under guise of 'American dream' and if you are not yet rich, well you just didn't work hard enough and should be ashamed and go back to work more and harder. Which is bullshit on many levels. Everybody in society benefits when poor are helped a bit and not kept poor and desperate. But that would require skimming a bit off the top, reshuffling few things and bottom jobs would still have to be paid livable wages without exception. Compared to places where social inequality is much lower (ie some parts of Europe), US has some deep societal issues that I don't see going away soon, in contrary. Marketing has been very effective in branding any other idea as socialism/communism. And here is the media role, be it Hollywood, news etc - resist any change, our way is the best, it was and always will be. Don't think hard if its best for you, or you are not a true American. Or it could be the opposite - from US conservative viewpoint those leaning left are harming themselves and US society in the long run (not that I agree with this, but I can understand why certain people would hold this opinion). (I don't have a personal stake at this, just presenting an outsider's, potentially flawed view. When deciding where to settle around the globe US went quickly off the list for quite a few reasons, overall not a place I wanted to raise my kids in but that's another topic. That was despite obvious strengths of US society and location, as strengths don't cancel out weaknesses in my opinion).
- dd36 6y ago
  Reduced diversity of opinion. Financial incentive to not cover or obfuscate news that would undermine their power. Case in point, Occupy Wall Street.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    Is it obvious that we have reduced diversity of opinion?
    - keiferski 6y ago
      https://youtu.be/hWLjYJ4BzvI https://youtu.be/hWLjYJ4BzvI
      - 542458 6y ago
        To clarify, these are all stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is the largest television station conglomerate in the United States. They've been pretty aggressive in buying up local stations, and have a reputation for exerting fairly strong editorial control and enforcing "must-run" opinion segments. One study found that local stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local events, increase coverage of national politics, and shift rightward in tone compared to other stations of the same area. http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf To be honest, I'm not sure this shows lack of diversity of opinion - but it does show how consolidation of news media allows a handful of people to use local stations as sockpuppets for their beliefs in a way that hides the origin of the message.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    Occupy Wall Street was hardly not covered. If anything, it probably got a disproportionate amount of coverage given the small numbers of people and the lack of coherent demands.
    - dd36 6y ago
      It wasn’t a lack of coverage but the intention to make them all look silly by focusing on the silliest among them.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  - fewer platforms means it was possible to deplatform a sitting President - leftst MSM means the left did not see reporting on 2020 election fraud, and very little on CCP malfeasance, so kept repeating endlessly the narrative keywords "debunked" and "no widespread election fraud." Visible exampls are cnn.com and NY Times, but those phrases were also commonly parroted on HN. (The reason leftists use the term "no widespread election fraud" is that everybody agrees there is election fraud via voters who moved out of state but still vote in their previous state, but leftists are attempting to exclude common sources of fraud like that to burden the accuser further.)
xtracto 6y ago
A very long time ago (15 years maybe?) there was a great internet site (I don't remember the name anymore) which showed a graph of top ~100 largest companies in the USA, their CEOs and their boards. When expanding the graph you could basically see that the same 30 or 40 people where in the boards of major companies, from Pepi to Johnson&Johnson to Microsoft to Fox and other communication companies. It showed a really interesting picture of how really consolidated the control was at the top.
- DerDangDerDang 6y ago
  Wow I was surprised it was so long ago! Assuming you were thinking of theyrule - seems it’s sort of still online but requires flash http://www.theyrule.net/2001/ http://www.theyrule.net/2001/
  - xtracto 6y ago
    Oh my god, yes this is it! and yes it was in Flash. I had completely forgotten about the name but clearly remembered the site. Thanks for bringing it back. EDIT: I tried to run the SWF file on Ruffle but there is no data. I can imagine that the SWF contacted some backend server to load data which is no longer available.
    - DerDangDerDang 6y ago
      Any idea if this sort of data is still available? I’m kinda sad that theyrule didn’t live on and become an institution, honestly
- imgabe 6y ago
  I believe it was http://theyrule.net http://theyrule.net Unfortunately, it looks like it's no longer up. You can find the home page on the Wayback machine[1] but it looks like the data was all in Flash. http://web.archive.org/web/20080901010712/http://www.theyrule.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20080901010712/http://www.theyrul...
- bndw 6y ago
breck 6y ago
Yes. #EndImaginaryProperty #EndCopyright #EndPatents
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Moreover, that these media companies are not able to make profitable revenue by conveying factual news reports. They have a growing footprint through the consolidation and influence the public discourse and keep it focused on (seemingly) the most inflammatory topics, statements and events in order to drive clicks, views, likes & shares. Hence, they've devolved into entertainment while the public at large still perceives them as news sources. I am sure this has been going on to some degree for centuries. More than consolidation, the unprecedented reach to now 5 billion humans actually should be concerning enough to raise a hue and cry for oversight. Did he call the neo-Nazi's and white supremacists fine people? Did Biden launch his campaign on that claim? How can our news sources call themselves news when a few seconds of research (literally) can show such an inflammatory claim as false? This has to stop.
jollofricepeas 6y ago
Actually. Unregulated social media and the traditional consolidation of media are resulting in not much different than what occurred right after the US civil war. Not only did “unchecked” freedom of the press and speech result in the US Spanish War between countries but it also resulted in white terrorism against black, brown, and Asian people in the US throughout the period of Reconstruction from 1860’s-1930. - https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa... - https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyrawleyconference/31/ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyrawleyconference/31/ It’s no different than what happens now except it’s truly global and even more centralized. - https://www.salon.com/2021/01/16/despite-parler-backlash-facebook-played-huge-role-in-fueling-capitol-riot-watchdogs-say/ https://www.salon.com/2021/01/16/despite-parler-backlash-fac... - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934
RGamma 6y ago
Not treating journalism as public utility/service with high standards for integrity has something to with it. Compared to German standards, substantial parts of journalism in the US is a joke (an unfunny one, watching Fox News feels like a fever dream for instance). Too much bias and pollution with opinion and entertainment (opinions are fine, but only if clearly demarcated and from someone who has skin in the game and knows what's up, not random shrill plastic lady), too little self-reflection/introspection, too much clickbait, too short memory, blatant disregard for journalistic best practices. That said, the harsh financial environment there is at odds with sober, analytical (=boring) reporting. Too bad "öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk" (or information about it for that matter) basically isn't available in English, it would do well to lead by example (I've seen dw mentioned but that's a drop in the ocean really). That said current US societal problems have a more complex etiology than just media consolidation, but it really doesn't help to have the "mirror of society" blunted as much.
- deepnotderp 6y ago
  Yes, turn over more power to the German government, that's historically worked very well.
  - ulfw 6y ago
    "Thiel Fellow" says it all
- zapnuk 6y ago
  Not to mention the endless commercials... How do the viewers of CNN, Fox, MSNBC not recognize that the guests cannot make substantial points about policies when their discussion is interrupted every 5 Minutes for commercial breaks? Also, the USA has PBS, which is for a large part financed through a public fund (taxes). I don't know whats wrong with it but I assume by now most of the tv-watching audience is "trained" to watch opinion pieces on Fox&CNN instead of actual news.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    It's not 24/7 news, so the newshounds can't get their fix. And those who'd watch Fox and it's even more biased ilk will view PBS as purely liberal propaganda.
blunte 6y ago
The problem begins with loose campaign finance rules which allow money to control who can run for an election. Both primary parties' candidates are beholden to the big money interests which fund their campaigns. So once they do get elected, they must somehow make laws which benefit (as quietly as possible in the past, but very openly nowadays) the wealthy interests which fund them.
dmurray 6y ago
The headline is misleading. The article body doesn't claim that these 15 billionaires (actually it lists 20+, but focuses on the majority partners) own all, or any overwhelming majority, of US news media. It describes itself more accurately as > Here’s a look at some of the billionaires who own news media in the United States Many news outlets are instead owned by publicly traded companies: News Corp, Disney, the New York Times. Plenty more are small businesses. Yes, there have been mergers and acquisitions, but I would say it's more fragmented than many other healthy industries. If you just read the headline and thought "it's unconscionable that these 15 people should own 50% (or whatever) of US news media assets", what number would you think reasonable? 30? 100? 1000?
- meowkit 6y ago
  This is really an argument between big corps operating on scale + M&As vs. small local businesses. I think we should favor more news outlets than fewer (a specific threshold is a loaded question) that have outsized influence at the local level. These large media companies are living off clickbait and pandering to echo chambers and not on 4th estate accountability, or providing real value to peoples lives.
sunstone 6y ago
That and America should have a state funded, independent news organization similar to the BBC. It's not perfect, BBC has had some nasty prat falls but, like a supreme court, also not perfect, it's the best you can do. So when citizens are rubber necking around trying to figure out who they can trust there is at least a guiding star.
- ajmadesc 6y ago
  National public radio?
  - sunstone 6y ago
    With a budget of much less than a $1 per person per year. Probably not.
tim44 6y ago
what it here
lm28469 6y ago
It's a direct consequence of capital accumulation and lack of regulations. We have the same thing in France, billionaires own ~75% of medias (newspaper, tv, radio), some of them own so many that even when you think you're reading "multiple sources" you're actually reading slightly different flavour of the same propaganda : https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA Funnily enough most of them are friends, have regular "dinners" &co with politicians and other people of the "elite": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Siècle_(think_tank) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Siècle_(think_tank) People have been calling these things forever but we somehow "rediscover" it every now and then. > Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. > Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. Albert Einstein, Why socialism ? 1949
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Practically every "market" in America is a cartel or monopoly. Really this augurs the future of massive multinational corporations consolidating and controlling worldwide markets with cartel/monopoly power that will be even more insulated from regulation. Innovation comes from many players in actual competition. Sure some innovation can come from subdepartments in megacorps, but if you've spent any time in large corporations and witnessed the empire building and other structural behaviors more in common with single party rule governments, you know that innovation is suppressed. Employment likely is suppressed. You'd need more people doing the various roles of companies, and while that seems less efficient that what large companies are doing overall, I'd argue the reduced middle management pyramids and increased amounts of people trying different management and software approaches will lead to a net gain in efficiency, more fluidity, more GDP, and more local employment. Large cartels/monopoly megacorps also are better able an to lobby the government to entrench themselves. Possibly their greatest advantage. And highly incented to do so, which increases the overall corruption in the system of government. How much of the perceived corruption increase in American government, despite the transparency that the internet allows, is due to the monopoly/cartel consolidation throughout the economy?

That America and other countries have allowed the consolidation of media companies to such a degree is a large part of the reason why we're having so many problems today.

duxup 6y ago

How do you connect that to 'why we're having so many problems today'?

danielscrubs 6y ago
Not the op, but I think any consolation of media will make people care less about their neighborhood and more about the world, which might be a good and a bad thing. Bad in that local news are often a tiny bit more actionable and social building, and good in that it makes progress faster. I remember when I moved to another country and was absolutely shocked that they had local restaurant reviews on the news channels. Really appreciated it instead of all the doom and gloom. I visited quite a lot of them!
- dfmooreqqq 6y ago
  To be fair, lots of local nightly news shows in America have local restaurant reviews. My parents live outside of Asheville, NC, and their local nightly news on all the broadcast channels carries restaurant reviews and lots of "around town" happenings.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    Have they ever aired a negative review?
medlazik 6y ago
It's the #1 reason why so many people have been voting against their own interest for the past 20 years
- astura 6y ago
  Can you explain?
  - medlazik 6y ago
    The deregulation frenzy that started with Reagan/Thatcher and all over the world is responsible for the insane inequalities we have today. The billionaire owned media has a neoliberal agenda against regulation. Of course they don't have to call journalists to tell them what to say, they recruit heads of HR who recruit neoliberal journalists/editorialists. 90% of people haven't seen their wages progressing that much in 20 years, yet they keep voting for the Biden/Trump/Macron/Bolsonaro of the world whom appeal is 100% created by the media. Deregulation is also responsible for leaders doing nothing about global warming and so many other things that make the world a particularly shitty place right now.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    Not OP but generally poorer folks in US especially in rural parts vote for right which protects much more the rich. Its sold to them for generations under guise of 'American dream' and if you are not yet rich, well you just didn't work hard enough and should be ashamed and go back to work more and harder. Which is bullshit on many levels. Everybody in society benefits when poor are helped a bit and not kept poor and desperate. But that would require skimming a bit off the top, reshuffling few things and bottom jobs would still have to be paid livable wages without exception. Compared to places where social inequality is much lower (ie some parts of Europe), US has some deep societal issues that I don't see going away soon, in contrary. Marketing has been very effective in branding any other idea as socialism/communism. And here is the media role, be it Hollywood, news etc - resist any change, our way is the best, it was and always will be. Don't think hard if its best for you, or you are not a true American. Or it could be the opposite - from US conservative viewpoint those leaning left are harming themselves and US society in the long run (not that I agree with this, but I can understand why certain people would hold this opinion). (I don't have a personal stake at this, just presenting an outsider's, potentially flawed view. When deciding where to settle around the globe US went quickly off the list for quite a few reasons, overall not a place I wanted to raise my kids in but that's another topic. That was despite obvious strengths of US society and location, as strengths don't cancel out weaknesses in my opinion).
dd36 6y ago
Reduced diversity of opinion. Financial incentive to not cover or obfuscate news that would undermine their power. Case in point, Occupy Wall Street.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Is it obvious that we have reduced diversity of opinion?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    https://youtu.be/hWLjYJ4BzvI https://youtu.be/hWLjYJ4BzvI
    - 542458 6y ago
      To clarify, these are all stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is the largest television station conglomerate in the United States. They've been pretty aggressive in buying up local stations, and have a reputation for exerting fairly strong editorial control and enforcing "must-run" opinion segments. One study found that local stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local events, increase coverage of national politics, and shift rightward in tone compared to other stations of the same area. http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf To be honest, I'm not sure this shows lack of diversity of opinion - but it does show how consolidation of news media allows a handful of people to use local stations as sockpuppets for their beliefs in a way that hides the origin of the message.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Occupy Wall Street was hardly not covered. If anything, it probably got a disproportionate amount of coverage given the small numbers of people and the lack of coherent demands.
  - dd36 6y ago
    It wasn’t a lack of coverage but the intention to make them all look silly by focusing on the silliest among them.
redis_mlc 6y ago
- fewer platforms means it was possible to deplatform a sitting President - leftst MSM means the left did not see reporting on 2020 election fraud, and very little on CCP malfeasance, so kept repeating endlessly the narrative keywords "debunked" and "no widespread election fraud." Visible exampls are cnn.com and NY Times, but those phrases were also commonly parroted on HN. (The reason leftists use the term "no widespread election fraud" is that everybody agrees there is election fraud via voters who moved out of state but still vote in their previous state, but leftists are attempting to exclude common sources of fraud like that to burden the accuser further.)

xtracto 6y ago

A very long time ago (15 years maybe?) there was a great internet site (I don't remember the name anymore) which showed a graph of top ~100 largest companies in the USA, their CEOs and their boards. When expanding the graph you could basically see that the same 30 or 40 people where in the boards of major companies, from Pepi to Johnson&Johnson to Microsoft to Fox and other communication companies. It showed a really interesting picture of how really consolidated the control was at the top.

DerDangDerDang 6y ago
Wow I was surprised it was so long ago! Assuming you were thinking of theyrule - seems it’s sort of still online but requires flash http://www.theyrule.net/2001/ http://www.theyrule.net/2001/
- xtracto 6y ago
  Oh my god, yes this is it! and yes it was in Flash. I had completely forgotten about the name but clearly remembered the site. Thanks for bringing it back. EDIT: I tried to run the SWF file on Ruffle but there is no data. I can imagine that the SWF contacted some backend server to load data which is no longer available.
  - DerDangDerDang 6y ago
    Any idea if this sort of data is still available? I’m kinda sad that theyrule didn’t live on and become an institution, honestly
imgabe 6y ago
I believe it was http://theyrule.net http://theyrule.net Unfortunately, it looks like it's no longer up. You can find the home page on the Wayback machine[1] but it looks like the data was all in Flash. http://web.archive.org/web/20080901010712/http://www.theyrule.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20080901010712/http://www.theyrul...
bndw 6y ago

breck 6y ago

Yes. #EndImaginaryProperty #EndCopyright #EndPatents

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

Moreover, that these media companies are not able to make profitable revenue by conveying factual news reports. They have a growing footprint through the consolidation and influence the public discourse and keep it focused on (seemingly) the most inflammatory topics, statements and events in order to drive clicks, views, likes & shares. Hence, they've devolved into entertainment while the public at large still perceives them as news sources. I am sure this has been going on to some degree for centuries. More than consolidation, the unprecedented reach to now 5 billion humans actually should be concerning enough to raise a hue and cry for oversight. Did he call the neo-Nazi's and white supremacists fine people? Did Biden launch his campaign on that claim? How can our news sources call themselves news when a few seconds of research (literally) can show such an inflammatory claim as false? This has to stop.

jollofricepeas 6y ago

Actually. Unregulated social media and the traditional consolidation of media are resulting in not much different than what occurred right after the US civil war. Not only did “unchecked” freedom of the press and speech result in the US Spanish War between countries but it also resulted in white terrorism against black, brown, and Asian people in the US throughout the period of Reconstruction from 1860’s-1930. - https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journalism https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa... - https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyrawleyconference/31/ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyrawleyconference/31/ It’s no different than what happens now except it’s truly global and even more centralized. - https://www.salon.com/2021/01/16/despite-parler-backlash-facebook-played-huge-role-in-fueling-capitol-riot-watchdogs-say/ https://www.salon.com/2021/01/16/despite-parler-backlash-fac... - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46105934

RGamma 6y ago

Not treating journalism as public utility/service with high standards for integrity has something to with it. Compared to German standards, substantial parts of journalism in the US is a joke (an unfunny one, watching Fox News feels like a fever dream for instance). Too much bias and pollution with opinion and entertainment (opinions are fine, but only if clearly demarcated and from someone who has skin in the game and knows what's up, not random shrill plastic lady), too little self-reflection/introspection, too much clickbait, too short memory, blatant disregard for journalistic best practices. That said, the harsh financial environment there is at odds with sober, analytical (=boring) reporting. Too bad "öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk" (or information about it for that matter) basically isn't available in English, it would do well to lead by example (I've seen dw mentioned but that's a drop in the ocean really). That said current US societal problems have a more complex etiology than just media consolidation, but it really doesn't help to have the "mirror of society" blunted as much.

deepnotderp 6y ago
Yes, turn over more power to the German government, that's historically worked very well.
- ulfw 6y ago
  "Thiel Fellow" says it all
zapnuk 6y ago
Not to mention the endless commercials... How do the viewers of CNN, Fox, MSNBC not recognize that the guests cannot make substantial points about policies when their discussion is interrupted every 5 Minutes for commercial breaks? Also, the USA has PBS, which is for a large part financed through a public fund (taxes). I don't know whats wrong with it but I assume by now most of the tv-watching audience is "trained" to watch opinion pieces on Fox&CNN instead of actual news.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  It's not 24/7 news, so the newshounds can't get their fix. And those who'd watch Fox and it's even more biased ilk will view PBS as purely liberal propaganda.

blunte 6y ago

The problem begins with loose campaign finance rules which allow money to control who can run for an election. Both primary parties' candidates are beholden to the big money interests which fund their campaigns. So once they do get elected, they must somehow make laws which benefit (as quietly as possible in the past, but very openly nowadays) the wealthy interests which fund them.

dmurray 6y ago

The headline is misleading. The article body doesn't claim that these 15 billionaires (actually it lists 20+, but focuses on the majority partners) own all, or any overwhelming majority, of US news media. It describes itself more accurately as > Here’s a look at some of the billionaires who own news media in the United States Many news outlets are instead owned by publicly traded companies: News Corp, Disney, the New York Times. Plenty more are small businesses. Yes, there have been mergers and acquisitions, but I would say it's more fragmented than many other healthy industries. If you just read the headline and thought "it's unconscionable that these 15 people should own 50% (or whatever) of US news media assets", what number would you think reasonable? 30? 100? 1000?

meowkit 6y ago
This is really an argument between big corps operating on scale + M&As vs. small local businesses. I think we should favor more news outlets than fewer (a specific threshold is a loaded question) that have outsized influence at the local level. These large media companies are living off clickbait and pandering to echo chambers and not on 4th estate accountability, or providing real value to peoples lives.

sunstone 6y ago

That and America should have a state funded, independent news organization similar to the BBC. It's not perfect, BBC has had some nasty prat falls but, like a supreme court, also not perfect, it's the best you can do. So when citizens are rubber necking around trying to figure out who they can trust there is at least a guiding star.

ajmadesc 6y ago
National public radio?
- sunstone 6y ago
  With a budget of much less than a $1 per person per year. Probably not.

tim44 6y ago

what it here

lm28469 6y ago

It's a direct consequence of capital accumulation and lack of regulations. We have the same thing in France, billionaires own ~75% of medias (newspaper, tv, radio), some of them own so many that even when you think you're reading "multiple sources" you're actually reading slightly different flavour of the same propaganda : https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cartes/PPA Funnily enough most of them are friends, have regular "dinners" &co with politicians and other people of the "elite": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Siècle_(think_tank) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Siècle_(think_tank) People have been calling these things forever but we somehow "rediscover" it every now and then. > Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. > Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. Albert Einstein, Why socialism ? 1949

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

Practically every "market" in America is a cartel or monopoly. Really this augurs the future of massive multinational corporations consolidating and controlling worldwide markets with cartel/monopoly power that will be even more insulated from regulation. Innovation comes from many players in actual competition. Sure some innovation can come from subdepartments in megacorps, but if you've spent any time in large corporations and witnessed the empire building and other structural behaviors more in common with single party rule governments, you know that innovation is suppressed. Employment likely is suppressed. You'd need more people doing the various roles of companies, and while that seems less efficient that what large companies are doing overall, I'd argue the reduced middle management pyramids and increased amounts of people trying different management and software approaches will lead to a net gain in efficiency, more fluidity, more GDP, and more local employment. Large cartels/monopoly megacorps also are better able an to lobby the government to entrench themselves. Possibly their greatest advantage. And highly incented to do so, which increases the overall corruption in the system of government. How much of the perceived corruption increase in American government, despite the transparency that the internet allows, is due to the monopoly/cartel consolidation throughout the economy?