godwarrior
Banned
Unfortunately that's what happens when the government starts to over regulate and involve itself in business. It feels it has "skin in the game".
YoungConserv said:What has happened is we have allowed our politicians too much power. Money follows power and this has allowed buisness to buy power in the form of political favors. This takes shape in crony capitalism which is best shown in bail outs and government grants but goes so much deeper. Crony capitatalism uses regulations that are sold as for the public good to create barriers to entry that give companies defacto monopolies, this especially evident in the insurance and energy industry's.
I suspect this is not correct. It seems fairly difficult to square this analysis with the facts of history during the so-called "gilded age." Business was relatively unregulated in the U.S. during that time, and abuses were both rampant and harmful. The average citizen was screwed royally, and government kept its hands off.
YoungConserv said:That's debatable as there was massive political corruption during that time. And even if that was true a lot of that was do to a uniformed populace I have a hard time beliving those abuses could happen again with the Internet. Also there's no reason we both can't be right there's enough blame to go around.
That may have been the case back then but now these regulations prevent new companies from entering new markets.I tend to agree a little more with this, though most of the corruption was just to keep government out of the business of business. Regulations came about, historically, because businesses were doing so much harm that it just wasn't sustainable. But I think it's surely not impossible to neutralize the harm that powerful organizations (whether business or government) inflict on common people.
YoungConserv said:That may have been the case back then but now these regulations prevent new companies from entering new markets.
What do you think we ought to do about this situation?
Unfortunately that's what happens when the government starts to over regulate and involve itself in business. It feels it has "skin in the game".
YoungConserv said:I think you de regulate and allow competition but turn the regulatory agencies into a observers that hit them when they try and abuse the people.
That's competition it's sleazy but not illegal the only way to adress this is transparency and giving the people more information so they can make choice on things other than price.This is something to which I could provisionally agree, though I think we have to be very careful about what amounts to abuse. Tell you what...here's a true story about how I used to do business before I woke up and decided to get back into academia:
Whenever a competitor would come into one of my markets (I was the VP of purchasing for a specialty grocery chain. We didn't compete with places like Homeland, Reasors, Safeway, or etc since those places tended not to carry specialty items, so our competitors were invariably smaller operations), I would call up my suppliers and tell them they could forget business from me if they supplied the competition. Since I purchased in fairly high volume from more or less all the suppliers in the industry, this was a no-brainer for them. So these competitors would usually spend half a mil or so on buildout before they realized they weren't going to be able to get any inventory. I put maybe ten or so people out of business that way before they ever got started.
How would you handle that? There's no law that says one person can't influence another to not enter into an agreement. I was just exercising my right to do so and keep my suppliers from entering a contract with my would-be competitors. And believe me when I say, I got away (figuratively speaking) with murder. When I started at the company, the average wage was $10 an hour for store employees. By the time I was done, 13 years later, it was $7.85. I had various ways of driving down wages. My shareholders were very happy (to be fair, this wasn't all me by a long shot, but I helped). I was able to offer less to my employees because I was good at limiting their other options. I gouged my customers with insane markups (I had margins--margins, not markups--that were nearly 300% on some items).
The point of this story is that business doesn't want competition either. It's in the interest of established businesses to keep competition out of the market, to pay labor as low a wage as possible, and to charge people as high as possible. Short-term gains have become the name of the game, and this has very deleterious consequences. How are you going to handle these?
YoungConserv said:That's competition it's sleazy but not illegal the only way to adress this is transparency and giving the people more information so they can make choice on things other than price.
Here are some definitions to make you think:Definition of CAPITALISM
: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market
Definition of OLIGARCHY
: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes
Well, if your business fails you get bailed out. Why compete when you can work together to cut all your employee benefits and report record profits. All you need to do in America to succeed is buy yourself a senator, and why not they are clearly for sale in our United Oligarchy of America!
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