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This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natu

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently. Let them go through a cumbersome govenment approval process for price changes or something to cap margins. Price fixing cartels need to be busted more aggressively.

vtashkov 2y ago
[flagged]
- ordinaryradical 2y ago
  If you can’t be intellectually curious why even be on HN? Strawmanning like this may make you think you’re clever but it signals to the “average person” that your mind is made up. I don’t read articles here because my mind is made up but because I like considering different points of view and data. Maybe start with that spirit next time?
- binernerd 2y ago
  I’m not sure you understand so I’ll go slow. If one US company owns all of one thing it’s bad. Mmmkay?
  - vtashkov 2y ago
    If the government owns all it is FAR worse. Intel used to be a monopoly in practice. Now it’s not. The manufacturer of CPUs in USSR though never ceased to be the one and only. Is it dumbed enough for you to understand?
- wat10000 2y ago
  My local power company is a monopoly with rates heavily regulated by the state. My electricity is cheap and reliable. Newsflash: anything can be done badly. Cherry-picking the worst examples proves nothing.
- cratermoon 2y ago
  Redbaiting is SO 1950s
  - _uxvx 2y ago
    Redbaiting in 1950s turned out to be absolutely right thing to do, as latest unclassified documents showed. The problem is that now huge amount of us population live in the capitalism but preach socialism, even though there’s quite good choice of leftist countries where they can migrate to.
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      > The problem is that now huge amount of us population live in the capitalism but preach socialism, even though there’s quite good choice of leftist countries where they can migrate to. You got me. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
- zemo 2y ago
  The argument that you are making is that a single entity controlling the pricing of a good is bad. That's not a counter-argument, it's the same argument. It's bad when a government does it, it's bad when an oligopoly does it. More than one thing can be bad.
  - vtashkov 2y ago
    No, the argument I an countering is that since oligopoly is bad, government control would fix it. It has NEVER fixed it. Only more free market could.
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/ https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
- cogman10 2y ago
  Well let's see, the Russian market collapsed primarily because of sanctions. The Venezuelan market also collapsed primarily due to sanctions. And of course the Cuba market collapsed primarily due to sanctions. It seems to me that the US and other nations locking these countries out of the global market has been a pretty major factor in their current economic situation. Do you disagree? I'd also posit that it might be the case that an autocratic takeover in each of these nations has negatively impacted them.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  Also in some tribes in south America - checkmate!
ajmurmann 2y ago
"But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily." All companies are greedy. That's the reason for existence. Your point that monopolies and oligopolies need to be crushed is very valid though. I wish more mergers were rejected in the first place. Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though.
- HarryHirsch 2y ago
  Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though That's an assertion, not a statement of fact. Pricing in natural monopolies is a mature subject, and public utilities have been a thing for over 100 years. Also, pricing for medical procedures is regulated in Europe, and it works extremely well.
  - ajmurmann 2y ago
    Yes, it's preferably over allowing a monopoly to set prices. However, wherever possible you should break up the monopoly or prevent it on the first place. Of course there are conditions where that's very hard and you mention some of them. Setting prices where you could just have a functioning market has historically been well proven to lead to disaster. Look at any communist country. The GDR ended up allowing luxury stores that were not price bound and they were a huge hit for a reason.
  - aianus 2y ago
    The wait time for medical procedures is extremely long in places with price caps. It does not work “extremely well” at all, it results in shortages and wait times exactly as you would expect from economics 101. I’m speaking from personal experience having been through it myself but feel free to look up how many Canadians go to the US every year and pay out of pocket for more evidence.
    - HarryHirsch 2y ago
      The wait time when you can't afford the physician is infinite. That's the market at work.
stickfigure 2y ago
[flagged]
- ruds 2y ago
  Antitrust suits were filed against these four companies in November, alleging that they conspired to fix prices: https://archive.is/fp44d https://archive.is/fp44d
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  That's pretty funny coming from someone attempting to manipulate people who have read the comments but not the linked article, or the original reporting that is linked to in said article. You left out all four companies feeding data to PotatoTrac, all four companies announcing raising their prices by the same amount at exactly the same time, executives shifting which company they work for like it's a merry-go-round, the four companies communicating extensively between each other in a way not even remotely natural for competitors, the companies demanding suppliers not take on other customers, restaurant distributors forcibly bundling fries with other foods so that restaurants have to sell them, and so on. Oh, and multiple anti-trust lawsuits: https://fortune.com/2024/11/22/potato-cartel-price-fixing-lawsuits/ https://fortune.com/2024/11/22/potato-cartel-price-fixing-la... Also left out that other mega-food companies have been caught doing the same thing...
- asadotzler 2y ago
  Are you willfully misleading here or did you simply not, you know, do the thing you're supposed to do before commenting?
Aurornis 2y ago
> If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently. The fallacy is assuming that the government will make everything cheap for consumers. In practice, government regulation of prices just changes the game. Look at any market with rent control: There are numerous meta-games around building or not building new supply, landlords are incentivized to not fix units because they know tenants don’t want to give up their rent control and move, and a new market emerges where people illegally sublet their rent controlled apartments because it becomes attractive to take advantage of the market demand that landlords aren’t allowed to capitalize on. The other fallacy in all of this is thinking that companies control both supply and demand. For nearly all commodities, there is a price where consumers won’t pay for it. If rents get too high, people move to a different city. If gas gets too expensive they start carpooling and looking for WFH jobs. If eggs are too expensive they eat something else. These choices make people angry as hell, but there’s no denying that these choices exist. Companies can’t push past these limits and force people to buy at any price. They still have to discover that point on the supply and demand curve.
- danny_codes 2y ago
  What. Are you advocating for monopolies? Obviously there is a point where people stop buying essentials. The point of capitalism is to deliver goods as cheaply as possible. If toothpaste costs $60 I would still buy it because I need toothpaste. But that extra money now goes to someone who isn’t producing, they are mooching. It’s a welfare check to a billionaire. In a monopoly pricing is fixed at maximum profit, which could make goods 10x or 100x for things with relatively inelastic demand.
  - ogleopoly 2y ago
    [flagged]
- galleywest200 2y ago
  > If rents get too high, people move to a different city. With what money? It takes three months rent up-front to move (first+last month rent and a deposit equal to one month rent) up front. People _need_ a place to live and will spend every last dollar to not be homeless.
wyager 2y ago
> The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. Which is what, exactly? The US is per capita richer than almost all EU countries by a huge margin (with a few small exceptions mostly enabled by regulatory arbitrage targeting US money), so forgive me if I don't take your seething commentary about the US economic apparatus very seriously.
- gmueckl 2y ago
  Any free, unregulated market will eliminate competitors until they create an oligopoly or even a single monopoly. It's an immediate consequence of the rules of the market.
  - wyager 2y ago
    Despite constant moaning about the US not engaging in monopoly-busting anymore, that doesn't actually seem to be a problem in practice. In reality, comparative advantage and specialization dynamics do not uniformly equilibrate on monopoly markets.
    - unethical_ban 2y ago
      The content of the article shows that it is still a problem. You think that landlords and food suppliers colluding to raise prices to just below the breaking point is not a problem?
      - wyager 2y ago
        It's not a "breaking point", it's the market rate. There's no landlord cartel; anyone can easily defect and lower their own prices. The entire food production and provision supply chain has razor-thin margins. If you're hyperfocusing on that industry, it's a sign that your heuristics are pointing you at the wrong things.
        unethical_ban 2y ago
olalonde 2y ago
> to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states What is that natural end state? Natural monopolies are exceedingly rare, almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention.
- ogleopoly 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - olalonde 2y ago
    Government non-intervention doesn't typically lead to monopolies. What monopoly are you referring to?
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    1) Government imposes regulatory barriers to entry, inhibiting new businesses from entering the market 2) Incumbents buy each other and raise prices If you only had the second one then as soon as the incumbents tried to raise prices, new businesses would want a piece of it and enter the market, causing prices to fall until it was no longer profitable to enter the market.
- emn13 2y ago
  I'm curious what you base that on. For instance, we've never really allowed literally cutthoat competition, nor things like fraud and we've generally not allowed misrepresentation. Governments intervene heavily and always have to set those kind of boundary conditions - but there are really lots of them. Economies of scale seem to be very, very common ever since the industrial revolution; and even more so in today's information-economy platform era. I'm sure there are plenty of cases where significant competition is a natural end state, but how common those are in comparison? I'm curious.
  - olalonde 2y ago
    The observation that the least regulated markets are typically the most competitive ones and that large companies rarely tend to maintain their lead over long periods of time. And at least one Nobel Prize-winning economist agrees with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU

vtashkov 2y ago

[flagged]

ordinaryradical 2y ago
If you can’t be intellectually curious why even be on HN? Strawmanning like this may make you think you’re clever but it signals to the “average person” that your mind is made up. I don’t read articles here because my mind is made up but because I like considering different points of view and data. Maybe start with that spirit next time?
binernerd 2y ago
I’m not sure you understand so I’ll go slow. If one US company owns all of one thing it’s bad. Mmmkay?
- vtashkov 2y ago
  If the government owns all it is FAR worse. Intel used to be a monopoly in practice. Now it’s not. The manufacturer of CPUs in USSR though never ceased to be the one and only. Is it dumbed enough for you to understand?
wat10000 2y ago
My local power company is a monopoly with rates heavily regulated by the state. My electricity is cheap and reliable. Newsflash: anything can be done badly. Cherry-picking the worst examples proves nothing.
cratermoon 2y ago
Redbaiting is SO 1950s
- _uxvx 2y ago
  Redbaiting in 1950s turned out to be absolutely right thing to do, as latest unclassified documents showed. The problem is that now huge amount of us population live in the capitalism but preach socialism, even though there’s quite good choice of leftist countries where they can migrate to.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    > The problem is that now huge amount of us population live in the capitalism but preach socialism, even though there’s quite good choice of leftist countries where they can migrate to. You got me. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
zemo 2y ago
The argument that you are making is that a single entity controlling the pricing of a good is bad. That's not a counter-argument, it's the same argument. It's bad when a government does it, it's bad when an oligopoly does it. More than one thing can be bad.
- vtashkov 2y ago
  No, the argument I an countering is that since oligopoly is bad, government control would fix it. It has NEVER fixed it. Only more free market could.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/ https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
cogman10 2y ago
Well let's see, the Russian market collapsed primarily because of sanctions. The Venezuelan market also collapsed primarily due to sanctions. And of course the Cuba market collapsed primarily due to sanctions. It seems to me that the US and other nations locking these countries out of the global market has been a pretty major factor in their current economic situation. Do you disagree? I'd also posit that it might be the case that an autocratic takeover in each of these nations has negatively impacted them.
notTooFarGone 2y ago
Also in some tribes in south America - checkmate!

ajmurmann 2y ago

"But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily." All companies are greedy. That's the reason for existence. Your point that monopolies and oligopolies need to be crushed is very valid though. I wish more mergers were rejected in the first place. Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though.

HarryHirsch 2y ago
Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though That's an assertion, not a statement of fact. Pricing in natural monopolies is a mature subject, and public utilities have been a thing for over 100 years. Also, pricing for medical procedures is regulated in Europe, and it works extremely well.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  Yes, it's preferably over allowing a monopoly to set prices. However, wherever possible you should break up the monopoly or prevent it on the first place. Of course there are conditions where that's very hard and you mention some of them. Setting prices where you could just have a functioning market has historically been well proven to lead to disaster. Look at any communist country. The GDR ended up allowing luxury stores that were not price bound and they were a huge hit for a reason.
- aianus 2y ago
  The wait time for medical procedures is extremely long in places with price caps. It does not work “extremely well” at all, it results in shortages and wait times exactly as you would expect from economics 101. I’m speaking from personal experience having been through it myself but feel free to look up how many Canadians go to the US every year and pay out of pocket for more evidence.
  - HarryHirsch 2y ago
    The wait time when you can't afford the physician is infinite. That's the market at work.

stickfigure 2y ago

[flagged]

ruds 2y ago
Antitrust suits were filed against these four companies in November, alleging that they conspired to fix prices: https://archive.is/fp44d https://archive.is/fp44d
KennyBlanken 2y ago
That's pretty funny coming from someone attempting to manipulate people who have read the comments but not the linked article, or the original reporting that is linked to in said article. You left out all four companies feeding data to PotatoTrac, all four companies announcing raising their prices by the same amount at exactly the same time, executives shifting which company they work for like it's a merry-go-round, the four companies communicating extensively between each other in a way not even remotely natural for competitors, the companies demanding suppliers not take on other customers, restaurant distributors forcibly bundling fries with other foods so that restaurants have to sell them, and so on. Oh, and multiple anti-trust lawsuits: https://fortune.com/2024/11/22/potato-cartel-price-fixing-lawsuits/ https://fortune.com/2024/11/22/potato-cartel-price-fixing-la... Also left out that other mega-food companies have been caught doing the same thing...
asadotzler 2y ago
Are you willfully misleading here or did you simply not, you know, do the thing you're supposed to do before commenting?

Aurornis 2y ago

> If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently. The fallacy is assuming that the government will make everything cheap for consumers. In practice, government regulation of prices just changes the game. Look at any market with rent control: There are numerous meta-games around building or not building new supply, landlords are incentivized to not fix units because they know tenants don’t want to give up their rent control and move, and a new market emerges where people illegally sublet their rent controlled apartments because it becomes attractive to take advantage of the market demand that landlords aren’t allowed to capitalize on. The other fallacy in all of this is thinking that companies control both supply and demand. For nearly all commodities, there is a price where consumers won’t pay for it. If rents get too high, people move to a different city. If gas gets too expensive they start carpooling and looking for WFH jobs. If eggs are too expensive they eat something else. These choices make people angry as hell, but there’s no denying that these choices exist. Companies can’t push past these limits and force people to buy at any price. They still have to discover that point on the supply and demand curve.

danny_codes 2y ago
What. Are you advocating for monopolies? Obviously there is a point where people stop buying essentials. The point of capitalism is to deliver goods as cheaply as possible. If toothpaste costs $60 I would still buy it because I need toothpaste. But that extra money now goes to someone who isn’t producing, they are mooching. It’s a welfare check to a billionaire. In a monopoly pricing is fixed at maximum profit, which could make goods 10x or 100x for things with relatively inelastic demand.
- ogleopoly 2y ago
  [flagged]
galleywest200 2y ago
> If rents get too high, people move to a different city. With what money? It takes three months rent up-front to move (first+last month rent and a deposit equal to one month rent) up front. People _need_ a place to live and will spend every last dollar to not be homeless.

wyager 2y ago

> The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. Which is what, exactly? The US is per capita richer than almost all EU countries by a huge margin (with a few small exceptions mostly enabled by regulatory arbitrage targeting US money), so forgive me if I don't take your seething commentary about the US economic apparatus very seriously.

gmueckl 2y ago
Any free, unregulated market will eliminate competitors until they create an oligopoly or even a single monopoly. It's an immediate consequence of the rules of the market.
- wyager 2y ago
  Despite constant moaning about the US not engaging in monopoly-busting anymore, that doesn't actually seem to be a problem in practice. In reality, comparative advantage and specialization dynamics do not uniformly equilibrate on monopoly markets.
  - unethical_ban 2y ago
    The content of the article shows that it is still a problem. You think that landlords and food suppliers colluding to raise prices to just below the breaking point is not a problem?
    - wyager 2y ago
      It's not a "breaking point", it's the market rate. There's no landlord cartel; anyone can easily defect and lower their own prices. The entire food production and provision supply chain has razor-thin margins. If you're hyperfocusing on that industry, it's a sign that your heuristics are pointing you at the wrong things.
      - unethical_ban 2y ago

olalonde 2y ago

> to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states What is that natural end state? Natural monopolies are exceedingly rare, almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention.

ogleopoly 2y ago
[flagged]
- olalonde 2y ago
  Government non-intervention doesn't typically lead to monopolies. What monopoly are you referring to?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  1) Government imposes regulatory barriers to entry, inhibiting new businesses from entering the market 2) Incumbents buy each other and raise prices If you only had the second one then as soon as the incumbents tried to raise prices, new businesses would want a piece of it and enter the market, causing prices to fall until it was no longer profitable to enter the market.
emn13 2y ago
I'm curious what you base that on. For instance, we've never really allowed literally cutthoat competition, nor things like fraud and we've generally not allowed misrepresentation. Governments intervene heavily and always have to set those kind of boundary conditions - but there are really lots of them. Economies of scale seem to be very, very common ever since the industrial revolution; and even more so in today's information-economy platform era. I'm sure there are plenty of cases where significant competition is a natural end state, but how common those are in comparison? I'm curious.
- olalonde 2y ago
  The observation that the least regulated markets are typically the most competitive ones and that large companies rarely tend to maintain their lead over long periods of time. And at least one Nobel Prize-winning economist agrees with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLBzfFGFQU