Comment on Trying to find a messenger bag at Amazon
henfredemars@infosec.pub 2 days agoWhat we have isn’t even capitalism. The supposed free market doesn’t exist when the big players pocket the regulators to use as a weapon against smaller businesses and secure their own market positioning.
Incidentally, this is typically the end result of capitalism if you don’t rain in and break up the monopolies.
What we have is exactly capitalism. A “winner-takes-it-all” system breeds oligopoly, and oligopoly breeds corruption.
the big players pocket the regulators
That’s the entire point of capitalism, it’s how it’s always been, and it’s how it will always be. It’s class analysis: the capital owners have the media, the political power, and the repressive force of the state apparatus behind them.
There are two factors necessary for a truly free market that prevent any capitalist system from actually being a free market. They are:
Consumers need to have perfect information about the products and the companies that make and/or sell them.
There needs to be zero friction for new entrants into the marketplace, whether that is from costs to start up a business, or anti-competitive behavior from other companies with money to throw around.
It is impossible to achieve either of these in the real world.
They don’t need to pocket the regulators.
They just need to buy up the competition.
These practices are exactly the kinds of behaviors that regulators should prevent.
When a business gets huge it shouldn’t be allowed to buy up all of its competition. Regulatory authorities should block these acquisitions. For example, Sprint should never have been sold because it concentrated power even further and gives customers less choice.
It’s not simple price competition either. A company like Walmart can afford to sell products at a loss to drive other businesses out on purpose and then jack up the prices when they’re the only game in town. Dollar General has been accused of strategically placing stores to block businesses from making a profit.
Sprint is an interesting example because I believe regulators did block previous merger attempts on exactly those grounds.
It’s yet another case subject to the whims of whatever administration is in charge, and we’re stuck with the fallout
Dojan@pawb.social 2 days ago
I know. It’s how what China and the Soviets had wasn’t communism. A relatively small group of people climb up top and ruin everything, as they always have.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 2 days ago
It’s like we have a centrally planned economy but dumber.
I don’t know what the solution is.
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
The first thing I would do if I had a magic wand and could just change reality to see what happens, would be to get rid of Citizens United and whatever they called that decision that said money=speech. That’s the kind of thing that could actually happen without requiring wholesale societal change. Add in some strong campaign finance laws and maybe you could get some politicians who aren’t putting themselves up for auction to the highest bidder.