[American biased post, because that’s what I know and where I am]

Been screaming that capitalism is not the problem you are experiencing. Monopolies, or more to the point, cartels, have exploded in scope over the past 40-years. Think of a company you hate, a company that’s fucking you over, a company that’s fucking us ALL over. Bet they fit the bill.

Hate your job at Lowe’s? Go to Home Depot! wait… There’s a great family-owned, local hardware store, but I can’t afford to shop there.

Walgreens piss you off? Just go to CVS! well damn… New local pharmacy chain is really nice! They can’t take my insurance.

Don’t like your bank?

If you’re under 40, or maybe even under 50, I cannot relate how alien this all is, the words fail me. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, it’s easy to think it was always like this. Oh hell no it was not.

Along with allowing corporations unlimited political “speech”, i.e. campaign contributions, the proliferation of cartels will go down in history as America’s failing point. (Basically the same thing?)

News like the current entertainment mergers didn’t fucking happen. And here on lemmy we’re talking, with a straight face, about the ups and downs of the Netflix/Warner Bros./HBO merger. And if you’ll remember, Warner Bros./Time Warner/AOL was the largest merger in US history!

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    4 days ago

    Chicago School generally isn’t in favor of monopolies, and they opposed the to big to fail concept that is a big reason we are in this mess.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Nonsense, if companies took the loss from 2008 many banks and PE wouldn’t exist right now. A key part of capitalism is companies failing from bad investments, entropy, or other factors. You need the bust to create the boom.

        • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 days ago

          The Chicago school opposes monopolies and bailouts, but they support the conditions that inevitably lead to monopolies and too-big-to-fail companies.

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 days ago

            The conditions get created by government distortion of a market. Chicago School discourages government intervention.

            • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 days ago

              That lack of intervention is what created the conditions
              Capitalism naturally moves towards monopoly. Government regulation prevents monopolies. Capitalism accumulates power. Capitalists use that power to influence the government into letting them accumulate more power, until they have enough power to remove the regulations that prevent monopolies, then the capitalists form monopolies, then we get the very situation that we’re describing.

              • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                3 days ago

                Government regulation also creates and sustains monopolies. Most cable companies have competition prohibited by law. Bail outs allow companies that should fail and be replaced by many smaller companies to instead be more monopolistic.

                • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  2 days ago

                  Most cable companies have competition prohibited by law.

                  And how do you think laws like these came into existence? Capitalists accumulated power and then used that power to influence the government to protect their business.

                  You’re so close but for some reason you refuse to accept that business can and does influence the government.

                  But beyond that, the regulations we’re talking about were anti-monoply regulations. Despite you saying that the Chicago school is anti-monoply, they pushed to defang regulations that combated monopolies. Your justification is that regulations create monopolies, but you provide no reasoning why defanging anti-monoply regulations would reduce monopolies.

                  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    2 days ago

                    Blaming capitalism because doing a bad thing led to bad results is like blaming a recipe for being bad when you swap the eggs for cottage cheese. When you let companies make rules, that’s government intervention.