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Private ownership isn't anti-monopoly, though. Big fuck-off monopolies are the best way to deliver rents to shareholders, which is capitalism's objective functi

Private ownership isn't anti-monopoly, though. Big fuck-off monopolies are the best way to deliver rents to shareholders, which is capitalism's objective function, so ownership and management pursue the goal with a single mind and eventually they succeed. Eventually they find a combination of vertical/horizontal integration, economies of scale, network effects, platform effects, last mile dynamics, regulatory capture, and ownership rights that lock out competition. It's all they talk about, it's all they think about, and if you try to deliver a pitch to an investor without some kind of plan to build an anticompetitive moat god help you, lol. I'll believe that capitalists believe in competition when they start passing policy that promotes it. Policy that tax disadvantages large corporations to encourage them to break up. Policy that winds down the "cheat codes" that business students and boardrooms salivate over. Policy that prevents political influence from becoming just another route to investment return. Policy that makes it easier to do incorporation/payroll/taxes/benefits for small businesses. Until these things happen, I see capitalism as just one more flavor of the same old empire-building dynamics that stretch back through time. And not necessarily the winning one. Selling the industrial base of the United States economy to the Communist Party of China in order to pump the assets of wealthy Americans was a real six dimensional chess move. I suppose we'll see how it turns out.

whatshisface 2y ago
I didn't actually mention private ownership, only what might be called the right of free assembly. Also, for what it is worth, individual players in the market obviously want to become literal kings. They're "capitalists" but not "capitalist ideologists." Capitalist ideologists are people like Milton Friedman, who was not a fan of monopoly and who was himself not much of a businessman.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Free assembly is gradually being chipped away in the West.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    Our rights can't be eroded, only infringed. :-)
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  So they aren't true capitalists? Why does that sound familiar? My contention with the likes of Milton Friedman isn't that he enjoyed monopolies, it's that his policies (and those of capitalists by any definition I have heard put on the field) tend to support and encourage the formation of monopolies. Markets are full of natural anti-competitive forces (again, just ask any investor about moats) and if you don't have a plan to stomp them out, markets just devolve back into the world's 500th mechanism for the people on top to extract rents from the people on the bottom. As a side effect, the monopolies grow into the same bureaucratic monstrosities they claim to be the cure for. Exhibit A: Boeing, per TFA.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    Boeing is a government-dependent monopoly, and Friedman argued convincingly that pretty much all long-lasting monopolies were too. They achieve regulatory capture and that's that for competition. Also, it was true both times you heard it. Brezhnev had no intention of "building communism." :-)

whatshisface 2y ago

I didn't actually mention private ownership, only what might be called the right of free assembly. Also, for what it is worth, individual players in the market obviously want to become literal kings. They're "capitalists" but not "capitalist ideologists." Capitalist ideologists are people like Milton Friedman, who was not a fan of monopoly and who was himself not much of a businessman.

HPsquared 2y ago
Free assembly is gradually being chipped away in the West.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Our rights can't be eroded, only infringed. :-)
schmidtleonard 2y ago
So they aren't true capitalists? Why does that sound familiar? My contention with the likes of Milton Friedman isn't that he enjoyed monopolies, it's that his policies (and those of capitalists by any definition I have heard put on the field) tend to support and encourage the formation of monopolies. Markets are full of natural anti-competitive forces (again, just ask any investor about moats) and if you don't have a plan to stomp them out, markets just devolve back into the world's 500th mechanism for the people on top to extract rents from the people on the bottom. As a side effect, the monopolies grow into the same bureaucratic monstrosities they claim to be the cure for. Exhibit A: Boeing, per TFA.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Boeing is a government-dependent monopoly, and Friedman argued convincingly that pretty much all long-lasting monopolies were too. They achieve regulatory capture and that's that for competition. Also, it was true both times you heard it. Brezhnev had no intention of "building communism." :-)