4 ms·

Let us not forget why we went from an elemental money (gold) to a money that is printable: price stability. We collectively decided that we wanted a few people

• paulmd 4y ago
  > During the pandemic, knobs were turned. They continue to be turned. Where's the price stability? well, it kinda turns out the market is so highly consolidated and inefficient (in a market sense) that a couple oligopolists control most markets, and they pretty much all colluded to increase margins at the same time. the only knob the fed really has to put a stop to that is to hurt the economy so badly that people can't afford to pay it.
  • paulmd 4y ago
    BTW, while that may seem doubtful on the face of it, consider this: a single baby formula plant shutting down precipitated a national crisis because one or two plants basically make the whole supply for the entire country. Most food markets and most dry-goods (even tech markets specifically) are not any less concentrated than that. Smithfield and Hormel basically run almost the entire meat market, they control a supermajority share (and not a "technical" one either, we're probably talking >90% share) of the entire US production between two companies. What would happen if both Intel and AMD decided to raise prices? Well, you'd pay more, maybe in the long term you'd see a push away to ARM or RISC-V but that's always been a pipe dream in practice, x86 domination of the desktop market has never been cracked. And oops, turns out ARM went bad just recently too, so, time to start over again, better luck next time suckas!