4 ms·

What we have is more corporatism than capitalism - the markets are busy working with governments and setting up rackets to extract monopolistic rents. I don't h

What we have is more corporatism than capitalism - the markets are busy working with governments and setting up rackets to extract monopolistic rents. I don't have much experience with China but from my vantage point it does appear that there is quite a lot of competition between companies that does not seem to exist in the US to the same extent.

cyberax 2y ago
Uhm. Monopolism is the ultimate fate of unrestricted capitalism in established markets.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. And the minor amount of 'anti-monopoly' action taken by governments is hard to credit for that. The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to sustain without government. And even in the cases where something close to it can be created, they can seldomly really push up the price as much as they think. Historically its governments creating the monopolies most of the time.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    > A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. It kinda did. Large stagnant industries tend to collapse into monopolies. However, this was masked either by new more nimble companies pushing out the incumbents by utilizing newer technologies, or by industries fading away entirely.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      So it did but it actually didn't because of literally all the reasons people said it wouldn't. Sure if you remove new competition and technology then its more likely to happen. Defining monopoly is pretty hard in the first place. Only Will Smith can play Will Smith. Or is he in a market against all black actors? Or all actors? Or is it he also competing against the NBA/NFL? If a single company exist to provide some service in a small town, is that company a monopoly. If a company dominates a market for a decade+, is that a monopoly? There is a question of time. One can answers these question different ways. And even if they are monopoly, sometimes that is not a actually a problem. There are certainty some cases where some monopoly exist and are harmful. Mostly those are created by governments. However one can certainty have harmful situation in a relatively free market as well. But I think the argument that there was ever a case to be made that the Marxist idea of all companies merging in a single mega cooperation has never even been remotely true. And you have industries that are reasonably unregulated (in terms of market entry) and still have lots of competition. So the facts are 100% for sure much more complex then Marx and those that claim 'Capitalism always leads to centralization' believe. Or at least if it does it operates at timescales that makes it unclear that we should act on their recommendations. Often Standard Oil is the best example people can come up with and they are not even remotely close to taking over much outside of their specialty. Of course the whole discussion gets even more complex once multiple government (and cultures, and geographies, and climates and so on) are involved and we aren't taking about a single unified market.
immibis 2y ago
That's the result of capitalism, though. What else would the markets do? A corporation would be extremely stupid not to do these things. You can't have one without the other. And if the government was somehow incorruptible, as long as there was capitalism, corporations would still do their best to corrupt it.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  Large governments increase the agency effect and incentive for corruption. Many smaller governments operating as a federation decrease both of these. It gets to a point where it isn’t worth the effort or risk to try to corrupt the government because you would have to bribe too many people and the payoff is too low.
de_layer 2y ago
[flagged]

cyberax 2y ago

Uhm. Monopolism is the ultimate fate of unrestricted capitalism in established markets.

panick21_ 2y ago
A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. And the minor amount of 'anti-monopoly' action taken by governments is hard to credit for that. The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to sustain without government. And even in the cases where something close to it can be created, they can seldomly really push up the price as much as they think. Historically its governments creating the monopolies most of the time.
- cyberax 2y ago
  > A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't actually happened. It kinda did. Large stagnant industries tend to collapse into monopolies. However, this was masked either by new more nimble companies pushing out the incumbents by utilizing newer technologies, or by industries fading away entirely.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    So it did but it actually didn't because of literally all the reasons people said it wouldn't. Sure if you remove new competition and technology then its more likely to happen. Defining monopoly is pretty hard in the first place. Only Will Smith can play Will Smith. Or is he in a market against all black actors? Or all actors? Or is it he also competing against the NBA/NFL? If a single company exist to provide some service in a small town, is that company a monopoly. If a company dominates a market for a decade+, is that a monopoly? There is a question of time. One can answers these question different ways. And even if they are monopoly, sometimes that is not a actually a problem. There are certainty some cases where some monopoly exist and are harmful. Mostly those are created by governments. However one can certainty have harmful situation in a relatively free market as well. But I think the argument that there was ever a case to be made that the Marxist idea of all companies merging in a single mega cooperation has never even been remotely true. And you have industries that are reasonably unregulated (in terms of market entry) and still have lots of competition. So the facts are 100% for sure much more complex then Marx and those that claim 'Capitalism always leads to centralization' believe. Or at least if it does it operates at timescales that makes it unclear that we should act on their recommendations. Often Standard Oil is the best example people can come up with and they are not even remotely close to taking over much outside of their specialty. Of course the whole discussion gets even more complex once multiple government (and cultures, and geographies, and climates and so on) are involved and we aren't taking about a single unified market.

immibis 2y ago

That's the result of capitalism, though. What else would the markets do? A corporation would be extremely stupid not to do these things. You can't have one without the other. And if the government was somehow incorruptible, as long as there was capitalism, corporations would still do their best to corrupt it.

cjbgkagh 2y ago
Large governments increase the agency effect and incentive for corruption. Many smaller governments operating as a federation decrease both of these. It gets to a point where it isn’t worth the effort or risk to try to corrupt the government because you would have to bribe too many people and the payoff is too low.

de_layer 2y ago

[flagged]