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> The corporate world generally resembles Soviet culture a lot to me. The problems of Soviet culture are really the problems of bureaucracy. The way this is i

> The corporate world generally resembles Soviet culture a lot to me. The problems of Soviet culture are really the problems of bureaucracy. The way this is intended to be addressed in free markets is through competition. If your employer sucks, go work somewhere else. If their product sucks, buy it from someone else. This works pretty damn well as long as the company doesn't find a way to insulate itself from competition. But if that happens, it stops working, and then you're back to an unaccountable bureaucracy and all that entails. This has been happening increasingly in the US because corporations capture the government, and then they do two things: Weaken antitrust laws/enforcement, and "strengthen" other laws that raise market barriers to entry which are then sold to the public under the subterfuge of some kind of safety/security/labor protection/etc., because the public rightly wouldn't accept their true motivation as a valid justification. This also tends to feed on itself. Some industry captures the government, constrains competition, becomes abusive so people start demanding something be done about it. Instead of addressing the root of the problem (regulatory capture and insufficient competition), the incumbents propose a rule to reduce competition even more. So you get housing construction constrained by zoning, but instead of addressing that, the proposal is something like rent control, which disincentivizes construction even more and then long-term rents get even higher.

einpoklum 2y ago
> The way this is intended to be addressed in free markets is through competition "Free market competition" is an ideological construct. Collectively (and sometimes even personally), we can't "go work somewhere else" - and we certainly can't not-work at all. Moreover, if an "employer sucks", it may suck in multiple ways - environmental impact, social impacting where it operates, impact of its products and services on society etc. None of that changes even if you do go "work something else". What's necessary is improving things, not finding another 'stall' in the 'market'. > This has been happening increasingly in the US because corporations capture the government, The government exists to serve the interests of property owners, and more so, the larger ones - enforcing the social order and protecting their minority control of economic forces, the means of producing and distributing goods and services, from the rest of surrounding society. Capture by certain corporation is an attempt to tug at that common blanket to favor them specifically rather than keep the system somewhat stable and functional.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Collectively (and sometimes even personally), we can't "go work somewhere else" If Company A sucks and there are many other companies that don't, every single employee at Company A could quit and go work somewhere else, and then Company A can go out of business. That's a completely reasonable outcome for a company that sucks, and is what happens when there is actually competition. > and we certainly can't not-work at all. No known system satisfies the criterion that we all collectively don't have to work. > Moreover, if an "employer sucks", it may suck in multiple ways - environmental impact, social impacting where it operates, impact of its products and services on society etc. None of that changes even if you do go "work something else". What's necessary is improving things, not finding another 'stall' in the 'market'. These are not the "Soviet Shoe Factory" issue, they're externalities. If the company tries to make only baby shoes to save material but people want adult shoes and competition exists then people buy adult shoes from somewhere else and the shoe factory making unnecessary baby shoes goes out of business or doesn't have the perverse incentive to do that to begin with. If the company is dumping toxins in the river, that isn't one of the problems that competition is expected to fix, in the same way that it isn't expected to prevent thefts or murders. And it's also not a problem the Soviets fixed either.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > No known system satisfies the criterion that we all collectively don't have to work. The current system nearly satisfies that criterion. We'd just have to accept 1700s average living standards. Turns out in practice if you give people a day of free time they spend it bettering their lives by working instead of being happy with nothing.
  - ozim 2y ago
    Parent mentioned that not everyone can just swap. Like if company A is on NY but 20 competitors are better and all but only have the work available in L.A. You are not going to just quit and move. Hence efficient market might be so on scale that is not available for that employee.
    - 2y ago
marsovo 2y ago
Overall I agree: I think a big root cause of current woes is that companies have grown too large and competition is broken. Not only that, but larger entities have more leverage to tilt the playing field and become even more anticompetitive. There is another issue: collusion. If every company requires binding arbitration in their contracts (of adhesion), do I just opt out of having a cell phone, internet service, etc.? See also: RealPage's rent-fixing.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  I continue to find the RealPage thing amusing because it's simultaneously possible that a) what they're doing is totally ineffective because there are tons of landlords and withholding units from the market primarily benefits the landlords who don't participate and thereby achieve a lower vacancy rate, making all of the landlords who don't use it smarter and more profitable than the ones who do, thereby ensuring a ton of defections that make the scheme ineffective, and yet b) that what they're doing is still an attempt at price fixing, which is illegal regardless of whether or not it's effective.

einpoklum 2y ago

> The way this is intended to be addressed in free markets is through competition "Free market competition" is an ideological construct. Collectively (and sometimes even personally), we can't "go work somewhere else" - and we certainly can't not-work at all. Moreover, if an "employer sucks", it may suck in multiple ways - environmental impact, social impacting where it operates, impact of its products and services on society etc. None of that changes even if you do go "work something else". What's necessary is improving things, not finding another 'stall' in the 'market'. > This has been happening increasingly in the US because corporations capture the government, The government exists to serve the interests of property owners, and more so, the larger ones - enforcing the social order and protecting their minority control of economic forces, the means of producing and distributing goods and services, from the rest of surrounding society. Capture by certain corporation is an attempt to tug at that common blanket to favor them specifically rather than keep the system somewhat stable and functional.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Collectively (and sometimes even personally), we can't "go work somewhere else" If Company A sucks and there are many other companies that don't, every single employee at Company A could quit and go work somewhere else, and then Company A can go out of business. That's a completely reasonable outcome for a company that sucks, and is what happens when there is actually competition. > and we certainly can't not-work at all. No known system satisfies the criterion that we all collectively don't have to work. > Moreover, if an "employer sucks", it may suck in multiple ways - environmental impact, social impacting where it operates, impact of its products and services on society etc. None of that changes even if you do go "work something else". What's necessary is improving things, not finding another 'stall' in the 'market'. These are not the "Soviet Shoe Factory" issue, they're externalities. If the company tries to make only baby shoes to save material but people want adult shoes and competition exists then people buy adult shoes from somewhere else and the shoe factory making unnecessary baby shoes goes out of business or doesn't have the perverse incentive to do that to begin with. If the company is dumping toxins in the river, that isn't one of the problems that competition is expected to fix, in the same way that it isn't expected to prevent thefts or murders. And it's also not a problem the Soviets fixed either.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > No known system satisfies the criterion that we all collectively don't have to work. The current system nearly satisfies that criterion. We'd just have to accept 1700s average living standards. Turns out in practice if you give people a day of free time they spend it bettering their lives by working instead of being happy with nothing.
- ozim 2y ago
  Parent mentioned that not everyone can just swap. Like if company A is on NY but 20 competitors are better and all but only have the work available in L.A. You are not going to just quit and move. Hence efficient market might be so on scale that is not available for that employee.
  - 2y ago

marsovo 2y ago

Overall I agree: I think a big root cause of current woes is that companies have grown too large and competition is broken. Not only that, but larger entities have more leverage to tilt the playing field and become even more anticompetitive. There is another issue: collusion. If every company requires binding arbitration in their contracts (of adhesion), do I just opt out of having a cell phone, internet service, etc.? See also: RealPage's rent-fixing.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
I continue to find the RealPage thing amusing because it's simultaneously possible that a) what they're doing is totally ineffective because there are tons of landlords and withholding units from the market primarily benefits the landlords who don't participate and thereby achieve a lower vacancy rate, making all of the landlords who don't use it smarter and more profitable than the ones who do, thereby ensuring a ton of defections that make the scheme ineffective, and yet b) that what they're doing is still an attempt at price fixing, which is illegal regardless of whether or not it's effective.