Monopoly power was a much bigger concern in the past than it is today. Why aren't people more concerned about this?:

A New Age of Monopolies, by Thomas frank, Commentary, WSJ: ...Barry C. Lynn's recent book ... arises directly from the old antitrust tradition, and it presents us with an amazing catalogue of present-day monopolies, oligopolies and economic combinations. Its subjects are, by definition, some of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world. And yet almost none of it was familiar to me.
Mr. Lynn tells us, for example, about the power of single companies or small groups of companies over such disparate fields as eyeglasses, certain categories of pet food, washer-dryer sales, auto parts, many aspects of food processing, surfboards, medical syringes...
Nor had I ever heard about what Mr. Lynn calls "the vitamin cartel," or the "nearly complete roll-up" of advertising agencies, or that the "key industrial legacy" of now-imprisoned business executive Dennis Kozlowski was a company "that specialized in forging monopolies over U.S. marketplaces for everything from catheters to fire sprinklers to clothes hangers," or that a recent management book encourages readers to see monopoly power as the main goal of business strategy.
Mr. Lynn is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington; he first came to my attention with a memorable 2006 essay in Harper's Magazine in which he described the power Wal-Mart exerted over its suppliers...

Mr. Lynn ... describes companies that swallow their rivals and then, with competitive pressure diminished, set about "destroying product variety and diversity." ... We learn of entire industries where competitors have grown so close to one another that a collapse at one company would probably bring down many of the others as well.

This is, we are often reminded, a populist age, with fresh flare-ups of fury every time Wall Street bonuses hit the headlines. ...Mr. Lynn's anger at the Wall Street bailout, his fondness for small business, and his frequent homages to the nation's founders may seem superficially similar to the attitudes of the tea party protesters. But Mr. Lynn also takes pains to demonstrate that the economic "freedom" so beloved by the snake-flag set has actually yielded the opposite of freedom: a "neofeudal" system of "private corporate governments" answerable to no one. ...

Posted by Mark Thoma on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 01:53 AM in Economics, Market Failure Save to del.icio.us Tweet This Permalink Comments (52)

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bd said...
A description of our brave new world:

"neofeudal" system of "private corporate governments" answerable to no one. ...

Didn't SCOTUS just broaden their "rights" to buy elections?

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:05 AM

bakho said...
The media is paid from advertising. Why bite the hand that feeds them?

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:53 AM

ken melvin said...
Strange dichotomy, this of Tea Partiers and feudalism. The monopolies do indeed abet the tremendous markups on goods from China.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:56 AM

paine said in reply to ken melvin...
"The monopolies do indeed abet the tremendous markups on goods from China"
the very essence of the trans oceanic system

never modeled by our ivy bacons and math hams
as krug pointed out somewhere away back on his blog

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 06:02 AM

bd said in reply to paine...
paine,

Way to go. Of particular brilliance:

"modeled by our ivy bacons and math hams"

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 06:31 AM

jonboinAR said in reply to bd...
I detect a whistling above my pate.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 09:48 AM

Evan Harper said...
The story I got in Econ 101 was that FTC bureaucrats were pointlessly keeping the businessman down from the Progressive Era through the 1970s, whereupon Robert Bork and Richard Posner proved that we actually don't need to worry about monopolies, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 05:23 AM

WaltFrench said in reply to Evan Harper...
Ah, but the deal was only complete in the last couple of years whereupon the SCOTUS declared that the economic reasoning was “quaint” and outdated, so declared that the basis for Sherman was inadequate; any findings of harm would have to depend on case-by-case determination, rather than those musty notions called, “the Act.”

Very thoughtful of them to save Congress the trouble of amending their laws. They're so busy these days, what with constantly running for re-election.

Reply Mar 05, 2010 at 12:23 PM

LAFAYETTE said...
I've railed often enough about the Bigger-Is-Better management idiocy as the US went on a consolidation binge. If anti-trust regulators where not asleep at the wheel, a good many of these trusts/monopolies would have undergone tighter scrutiny.

Why did it take the EU Commission in Brussels to walk all over Microsoft for concessions that the AntiTrust Brigade in Washington never bothered to seek?

What is happening presently is the way markets are measured or considered as "unique markets". The Economist summed it very well, I thought, in this week's article on Antitrust in America:
{Some economists doubt whether defining a market is useful at all when judging marriages between very specialist firms. The issue has a growing saliency because America’s trustbusters are currently rewriting the guidelines for “horizontal” mergers (tie-ups between firms that offer the same sorts of products).

The update is partly an exercise in good housekeeping: the current guidelines were written in 1992 and do not reflect advances in economic theory and changes to actual practice since then. It is also an opportunity for American policymakers to shift the analysis of mergers away from an obsession with “structure” — the size of the combined market share of merging firms—to focus instead on how big a constraint each firm is on the other’s pricing.}

Whether markets "tie-up" horizontally or aggregate vertically (from suppliers-to-producer-to seller) is perhaps relevant, but the outcome in either case can be restraint of competition. Imagine what that means in terms of Wall Street Investment and Commercial Banking mergers and you will see what is meant.

And free access to multiple market agents is the Holy Grail of Highly Competitive Market Economies. Explain that to the Replicants ...

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 05:38 AM

paine said in reply to LAFAYETTE...
" the current guidelines were written in 1992 and do not reflect advances in economic theory and changes to actual practice since then."

theories of what "motivates"
the white whale
hardly change the necessary killing measures

man the boats
head for the spouts
hoist the sharpened harpoons

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 06:00 AM

jonboinAR said in reply to paine...
It's a smart whale, employs excellent propaganda.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 09:53 AM

Goldilocksisableachblond said in reply to paine...
"man the boats
head for the spouts
hoist the sharpened harpoons "

Running around with harpoons will just get us all thrown in jail. There's a better way. All we need is a bunch of golf balls.

I'm serious. I saw it on Seinfeld.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 10:22 AM

paine said in reply to Goldilocksisableachblond...
golf balls indeed

tie off some union talk
and watch the corporate reaction

we have a massive under paid service sector imunne to imports if not immigrants
lets raise hell at the job site

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 10:56 AM

jonboinAR said in reply to paine...
There has to be well-organized, sound-bite sized counter-propaganda, systematically disseminated.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 12:30 PM

paine said in reply to jonboinAR...
exactly

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:34 PM

paine said...
" a "neofeudal" system of "private corporate governments" answerable to no one. ..."
that is a very unhelpful piece of phrasing

"neo feudal" as in what ??

a laiisez faire road to hayek's serfdom ??

decentralized compartmentalized totalitarianism
a shared ownership of jobbled serf souls ???

true only if free labor is in the end unfree
but that's to exist about distinctions
above the particular
up in the realm of the prophets
not the reformers or revolutionaries

the MNCs as lawless self perpetuating global free booting baronies
might strike someone as colorful description

what we have seen these last 30 years
is a system striving blindly to subvert itself
the outcome precisely assured when large corporations
as the players in most markets are allowed to configure and re configure those markets to their narrow liking

the dynamics of oligopoly are all too well understood if not near often enough exposed to broad public view

we have past thru a marvellous age of unbounded corporate play called reagan's america

and just as the cutrain drops on that sorry act
another rises
to reveal a party of social progress
utterly unfit to its daunting present task

a genial crapulous dwarf in titan's clothing

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 05:54 AM

bd said in reply to paine...
Wow-- "a genial crapulous dwarf in titan's clothing"

I had to look up crapulous, couldn't remember what it meant.

bd

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 06:37 AM

paine said in reply to paine...
bruce the old graceful know it all fart
really knew it all
all along

we need institutional modeling
how "real" ??
let's find out

these various agent based computational models ought to allow accidental -historical time zero in media res "conditions "
like firms techniques and " n market spaces "
with borders and dynamic"profits "
from cross border arbitrage firms

if anything like that exists

no ones making much popular noise about it eh ???

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 10:00 AM

Patrick said...
Executives can extract larger rents from monopolies, so they naturally follow their incentives.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 05:55 AM

paine said in reply to Patrick...
pat that's the key

these outfits are
agent run
agent captured
agent bought and agent sold
putting aside the secondary trading markets that in essence make this "rational"
the mass of diversified equity holders
are really just lowest tier creditors
with maybe an upside
thru one of those ghastly
M and A frangles

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 09:54 AM

beezer said...
I don't understand the public's confusion about what's going on. Private corporations naturally seek to limit competition.

The larger ones, as their dominance grows, buy competition and use government influence to enhance this self preservation. Once you're at the top, or sharing space there, what are you going to do?

Wall Street, Health Care, Industrial Ag; all of them oligopolies, with Industrial Ag probably being the closest to monopoly status.

They've essentially bought the government. The Tea Baggers sense this but fail to understand it's the federal government's role to protect public, ie national, interests.

FDR used to be able to say this publicly, and did in his inaugural addresses, knowing he public understood. He actually railed agains the lack of ethics in business, and in government. But he knew who was supposed to be on first: The public's corporation, Uncle Sam.

Today's public seems to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome where they crave to be "liked" by their captors.

OK everyone. Bend over again and grab your ankles. You know the drill.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 07:03 AM

ken melvin said in reply to beezer...
pas mal mon brave homme

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:25 PM

Squidward said...
Private equity has become the model to create cartels and monopolies. You take a well connected former government official like former treasury secretary John Snow put him in charge of Cerberus Capital, buy up every firearms manufacturer that is for sale like Bushmaster (of beltway sniper fame) and Remington et al; then use you government contacts to secure lucrative government contracts. Private equity is famous for industry consolidation and they get tax advantages to do it.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 07:12 AM

EE engineer said...
We used to say that the Communism brainwashed Eastern European societies, but frankly, they always saw trhough it. --- Mainly because the school was free and as a result the population was seeking to resist through education. I remember my father telling me to choose mathematics, engineering - a non-liberalarts profession where no one can doubt your results and no Ideology can change that 1+1=2.---

Instead, what I saw living in the US was that the Capitalism brainwashed the Americans utterly and without return. Moreover, even the people who were in my EEuropean fresh-eyes working class poor told me that they were "middle class." Very good point somebody made here that the americans are kept prisoners by their tormentors.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 07:41 AM

paine said in reply to EE engineer...
alas a gosplan survivor with not only fresh and clear eyes
but even more
a sound mind
bravo

now to get you to revisit gosplan
with equal soundness

we need real scholars here not friedmanian dispoilers of the "records"
some one that can dig thru the paper trails
to seperate the red from the black
the green from the brown
the rational kernal from the senseless elaborations and unreasonable irrationalities
and reasonable compromises alike

no state on earth
is prepared to honor such work of course
alike

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 09:49 AM

ken melvin said in reply to EE engineer...
When Ahnald ran for Guv, he referred to the middle class as anyone making $18k/yr.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:27 PM

anne said...
Ken Melvin:

"The monopolies do indeed abet the tremendous markups on goods from China."

"The Supreme Court does indeed abet the tremendous markups on goods made domestically or internationally."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/washington/29bizcourt.html

June 29, 2007

Supreme Court Lifts Ban on Minimum Retail Pricing
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON — Striking down an antitrust rule nearly a century old, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that it was not automatically unlawful for manufacturers and distributors to agree on minimum retail prices.

The decision will give producers significantly more, though not unlimited, power to dictate retail prices and to restrict the flexibility of discounters.

Five justices, agreeing with the nation's major manufacturers, said the new rule could in some instances lead to more competition and better service. But four dissenting justices agreed with 37 states and some consumer groups that abandoning the old rule could result in significantly higher prices and less competition for consumer and other goods.

The court struck down the 96-year-old rule that resale price maintenance agreements were an automatic, or per se, violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. In its place, the court instructed judges considering such agreements for possible antitrust violations to apply a case-by-case approach, known as a "rule of reason," to assess their impact on competition. The new rule is considerably more favorable to defendants.

The decision was handed down on the last day of the court's term, which has been notable for overturning precedents and for victories for big businesses and antitrust defendants. It was also the latest of a series of antitrust decisions in recent years rejecting per se rules that had prohibited various marketing agreements between companies.

The Bush administration, along with economists of the Chicago school, had argued that the blanket prohibition against resale price maintenance agreements was archaic and counterproductive because, they said, some resale price agreements actually promote competition....

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:14 AM

ken melvin said in reply to anne...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100301/ap_on_hi_te/us_apple_labor

.....In 2006, Apple found that workers in a Chinese iPod factory were in many cases exceeding the company's limits for overtime. Apple ordered the factory to comply with its limits. Apple was responding to news reports at the time that workers at the factory were paid as little as $50 a month and were forced to work 15-hour shifts.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 04:29 PM

anne said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16supreme-t.html

March 16, 2008

Supreme Court Inc.
By JEFFREY ROSEN

The headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, located across from Lafayette Park in Washington, is a limestone structure that looks almost as majestic as the Supreme Court. The similarity is no coincidence: both buildings were designed by the same architect, Cass Gilbert. Lately, however, the affinities between the court and the chamber, a lavishly financed business-advocacy organization, seem to be more than just architectural. The Supreme Court term that ended last June was, by all measures, exceptionally good for American business. The chamber's litigation center filed briefs in 15 cases and its side won in 13 of them — the highest percentage of victories in the center's 30-year history. The current term, which ends this summer, has also been shaping up nicely for business interests.

I visited the chamber recently to talk with Robin Conrad, who heads the litigation effort, about her recent triumphs. Conrad, an appealing, soft-spoken woman, lives with her family on a horse farm in Maryland, where she rides with a fox-chasing club called the Howard County-Iron Bridge Hounds. Her office, playfully adorned by action figures of women like Xena the Warrior Princess and Hillary Rodham Clinton, has one of the most impressive views in Washington. "You can see the White House through the trees," she said as we peered through a window overlooking the park. "In the old days, you could actually see people bathing in the fountain. Homeless people."

Conrad was in an understandably cheerful mood. Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned reputation for divisiveness, it has been surprisingly united in cases affecting business interests. Of the 30 business cases last term, 22 were decided unanimously, or with only one or two dissenting votes. Conrad said she was especially pleased that several of the most important decisions were written by liberal justices, speaking for liberal and conservative colleagues alike. In opinions last term, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter each went out of his or her way to question the use of lawsuits to challenge corporate wrongdoing — a strategy championed by progressive groups like Public Citizen but routinely denounced by conservatives as "regulation by litigation." Conrad reeled off some of her favorite moments: "Justice Ginsburg talked about how 'private-securities fraud actions, if not adequately contained, can be employed abusively.' Justice Breyer had a wonderful quote about how Congress was trying to 'weed out unmeritorious securities lawsuits.' Justice Souter talked about how the threat of litigation 'will push cost-conscious defendants to settle.' "

Examples like these point to an ideological sea change on the Supreme Court. A generation ago, progressive and consumer groups petitioning the court could count on favorable majority opinions written by justices who viewed big business with skepticism — or even outright prejudice. An economic populist like William O. Douglas, the former New Deal crusader who served on the court from 1939 to 1975, once unapologetically announced that he was "ready to bend the law in favor of the environment and against the corporations."

Today, however, there are no economic populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests, up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average, between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its first two terms — and all of them were decided in favor of the corporate defendants....

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:20 AM

anne said...
Monopoly power was a much bigger concern in the past than it is today. Why aren't people more concerned about this?

-- Mark Thoma

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16supreme-t.html

March 16, 2008

Supreme Court Inc.
By JEFFREY ROSEN

An economic populist like William O. Douglas, the former New Deal crusader who served on the court from 1939 to 1975, once unapologetically announced that he was "ready to bend the law in favor of the environment and against the corporations."

Today, however, there are no economic populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests, up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average, between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its first two terms — and all of them were decided in favor of the corporate defendants....

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:28 AM

bp said...
under the hayekian neofeudalism theory of creative destruction, neoclassical definitions of static competition don't apply - toss out consumer/producer surplus, economic profit, deadweight loss and all the rest of it

amassing economic power is equivalent to creating the wealth of nations and distributing it in one fell swoop

what you have is what you're worth and what you're worth is what you deserve, so how you attained it is not to be questioned - you're either inside the monopoly loop in silence, or outside it, in silence as well because otherwise, you'll never get back inside

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:35 AM

paine said in reply to bp...
alf marshall will be vindicated bp

consumer surplus as the only surplus left standing
after competition taxes and regulations
that " static " result
has it's dynamic counter part
ias the target condition
of any market system that manages
ultimately to sublate
the present corporate surplus centered
private profit pooling
institutional paradigm

but ahh gosplan II
remians only in its embryonics still

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:05 AM

anne said...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/business/09antitrust.html

September 9, 2008

Antitrust Document Exposes Rift
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department laid out a broad policy on antitrust enforcement on Monday that drew an unusually sharp rebuke from three federal trade commissioners, who said it would protect monopolies from prosecution.

A 215-page report from the Justice Department, coming after nearly a year of public hearings, was originally meant to lay out a governmentwide approach to combating anticompetitive business practices. Instead, it exposed a rift between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission over whether the government was protecting consumers or big businesses.

In a quick response to the Justice Department report, three of the four commissioners on the F.T.C. issued a statement saying that the policy was “a blueprint for radically weakened enforcement” against anticompetitive practices. They said the Justice Department guidelines allowed monopolies to act “with impunity” and “would make it nearly impossible to prosecute a case.”

In nearly eight years under the Bush administration, the Justice Department has brought one case against a business on anticompetitive grounds, seeking to block the purchase of a West Virginia newspaper by a competitor.

Critics considered the new report an attempt, in the last months of the Bush administration, to make formal a pro-business approach to antitrust issues. The policy guidance is not binding on the next administration....

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:36 AM

paine said...
found it

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/an-institutional-economics-prize/

" in my own home field of international trade, the basic models don’t assign any particular role to multinational corporations; how do we get them into the story, and what difference do they make?"

imagine that

now models exist of course
scattered in the literature
i note pk's gesture that way in the same post

"Oliver Williamson’s work underlies a tremendous amount of modern economic thinking; I know it because of the attempts to model multinational corporations, almost all of which rely to some degree on his ideas"

yikes williamson !!!

but to use a pk figure he applied elsewhere

these MNC based trade models
must get "crowded out" at the popular level
ie disneyland economics
i guess
by the need for slick qualitative results
not to mention the sine qua non of broad propagation
ie compatibility with the ideologians of open borders
and their aggressive aims
in the up shot it nicely
keeps the gains from interborder trade
now going to the earths mighty MNCs
a hidden ball trick

the scotish tragedy without macbeth ???

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 09:42 AM

Bruce Wilder said in reply to paine...
Economics' theory of production is false. Output is NOT a function of input, and allocational efficiency is not all there is.

Economics focuses on allocational efficiency and incentives, almost exclusively. The organization of business corporations is about power and technical efficiency, things that don't exist in the imaginations of most economists.

In Krugman's home field of international trade, if there's been one Heckscher-Ohlin model tested and found unable to explain the patterns of trade as they exist, there have been 200. But, economists don't give up on Ricardo and comparative advantage. Krugman, himself, noted the other day on his blog, some thinking on trade, and the role of transportation costs, which was still purely comparative advantage. He betrayed no consciousness of error.

It may be that economists are useful propagandists, only. I don't know. But, I think economics just has a very hard time rejecting a theory as false on evidence.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 10:31 AM

paine said in reply to Bruce Wilder...
the key corporate "numbers"
that appear on the ceo's dash board
are a bad proxy
for the optimal controls
that oughta guide
our social production system

comparative dynamic efficiency
is the claim made ever since
b4 the first five year plan
for the private profit pool system

just ask any gosplan survivor
about soviet "firms"

but i've yet to see the proof
in fact that hybred rig up over in china looks to be a path to refutation
of course who could be sure
that paradigm can be pursued
by a working multi party
competitive elections based
system of governance

the desperate need to produce more and more
without pausing
simply to avoid over throw
is not part of a system
like ours
that rotates its elite fractions

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:34 AM

Bruce Wilder said...
We need economists, who have read Berle and Means, have their eyes open in a supermarket, and are curious about why you cannot buy cheap, unwaxed dental floss, and are unimpressed by 17 varieties of expensive waxed floss in pretty packages.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 09:42 AM

paine said in reply to Bruce Wilder...
i agree
but we need to simulate these outfits
create a toy market earth to give folks
an inkling here

i'm trying to kick up some independent interest in such a web site amusement park
with infotaining econ con arcade games

swiftian fantasy for now

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:09 AM

Goldilocksisableachblond said in reply to paine...
"swiftian fantasy for now "

My swiftian fantasy is a web-organized global walkout -- an Everyman's Union. The "swarm" would consist of the bottom 95% or so on the income scale and , during the organizational period , would collectively draft a list of grievances and associated policy fixes appropriate to their various federal , state , and local domains.

These demands would be presented to gov't , and a walkout date announced. If insufficient progress is made by gov't , everbody strikes on the same day -- no work , no travel , no purchases , no phone , no internet , no nothing on that day.

Still no progress ? Next time it's 2 days. Then a week. Then ...?

What could they do ? Fire the entire planet ? Even Reagan would have trouble pulling that off.

Anyway , that's my fantasy.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:41 AM

paine said in reply to Goldilocksisableachblond...
i hear ya comrade

maybe not a king phillip/one big union type final conflict
but a general rising

i ask u though
how often does it become
the theatre of masochistic cruelty and nothing more

recently here
the immigrant "community" came as close
to a general rise ..remember ??
and what happened ???

maybe the anti alien movement lost its elite sponsorship
then again who knows
the nativists ever had any elite sponsorship

my point
you got to plan a awy to win these uprisings
or don't make em
you gotta
make real tangible immediate gains

in some ways the civil rights movement of the late 50's and early 60's
mislead other movements

demonstrations are mobilizations they are not "actions"
sit ins are actions of course and occupations
but even then martyrdom might get civil rights
but it won't get economic rights ...not without an ability to cripple the production system
not just give it's jobblers
an unpaid holiday or two

no matter how transient
there must be a lawrence or a flint
not just one homestead and then a ludlow
and then as blood spilling
begins to pass out of currency
a controlers lock out

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:56 AM

jonboinAR said in reply to Goldilocksisableachblond...
Could they tit-for-tat and shut down the economy? See who cries "Uncle!" first? Could the threat of that keep the proles in their place while the powers demonize the organizers as job-destroying commies? There would have to be a lot of propaganda, education, ground laid first as has been done in the other direction for a generation.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 01:08 PM

Goldilocksisableachblond said in reply to jonboinAR...
If the economy really shut down , no matter who initiated it , the upper crust would be first to cry "Uncle" , by a long shot , assuming the proles were truly united. Their money is no longer a factor , since everyone , and everything , has gone swiftian. They'd be in bed in the fetal position , whimpering while wetting themselves. The average Joe , by comparison , would be on vacation.

It WOULD take a massive organizational effort , and a level of buy-in and committment that's hard to conceive. As I said , it's a fantasy.

Unions have and do work , however ; here , mostly in the past , but also currently in other countries. Globalization of the labor pool means their success in the future will increasingly be limited to smaller and smaller niches of labor that are not easily offshored.

Sector-wide unions would help a lot. A nation-wide union of all workers would be great. A world-wide union would be kick-ass , and Armageddon for the plutocrats.

I enjoy thinking about it.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 02:26 PM

Patricia Shannon said in reply to Bruce Wilder...
And its almost impossible to find non-dispolable razors, or blades once you have the razors. Very anti-green.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:53 AM

Bruce Wilder said in reply to Patricia Shannon...
Don't even get me started on replacement heads for electric toothbrushes.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:07 PM

jdw said...
Thanks a lot for those great links, Anne.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:10 AM

sth said...
It's the paradox of Market Fundamentalism that its supporters just do not seem to get. Take away all regulation and now instead of the Big Bad Government having all the power, corporations do. Do they not realize that given enough time, any Market Fundamentalist society will eventually become either Corporatist state or a Gangster Capitalist one? You trade one master for another, except that the government is at least /supposed/ to be accountable to the people. Who are the Somali warlords accountable to? How about the Mafia?

Also, with ultra low taxes, how exactly do you fund police forces to get the vaunted "protection from force and fraud?" Corporations and organized crime syndicates will be much, much richer than the wimpy Nightwatchman State. The corps and gangs will be armed with tanks, and the state will have pea-shooters. Just look at Mexico!

How long could this honestly last? Let's say you're a politician in the Libertarian States of America. You see that your country is overrun with armed gangs who are running protection rackets, blackmailing, terrorizing, and killing. Since this is a Libertarian, rather than Objectivist country (no monopoly on the use of force - which wouldn't matter anyway, since the gangs don't care about that idea.) everyone has a gun, but it's not enough. People just cannot stand up gangs that are so much better armed than they are.

So you realize you need a strong police force. You need a good intelligence agency. You then also realize that this is very expensive. How can you pay for it? "Private security firms" cannot do the job because they're too competitive with each other and refuse to share information. Most people also cannot afford to pay for the sort of policing and intelligence they need anyway, so only the very wealthy are safe in their walled fortresses. This sort of service just does not lend itself to individuals choosing to pay what they can "afford"; it needs to have a large pool of contributors, but your political system won't allow you to raise taxes to the necessary level.

It doesn't work. People will eventually be *begging* for a strong, funded central government back. Countries with weak central governments are likely to always end up as Corporate states, Gangster states, or simply get overthrown and have a (hopefully) saner system put in their place. Those who claim they don't "need a government for any-thing" don't know what it's like to live in a place without one!

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:24 AM

paine said in reply to sth...
sth

i think you re invent hobbes here

failed state "politics" indeed uses
klausy's other means as the main means

but the state re emerges spontaneously
in a closed system

somali reality is wide open to outside tampering eh ??

that perpetuates the strife

russian in the later 90's began to self organize more or less along the lines you suggest no ???
is that your model here ???

small nations lack that luxury to flop around awhile and after a looting get their shit together

look at my favorite eritrea
on a knifes edge

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 11:42 AM

Lafayette said in reply to sth...
BOSTON'S NORTH END

{So you realize you need a strong police force.}

I dunno aboud dat.

I recall American Italians in Boston telling me the story of the Mafia in the North End, which was and is still somewhat today an Italian neighborhood. In fact, at one time, if Paul Revere walked out of his house there, he would not have heard any English spoken in the street. That was probably at the turn of the 20th century.

There was a time when the Irish Mafia had invested the Boston police-force -- about when John Fitzgerald Kennedy's grandfather, "Fitz", was elected mayor of Boston from his prison cell. The police, at that time, would not respond to any calls from the North End. It was run by the Mafia and may the police figured the Mafia should protect it.

As the story goes, after the war, a gang of Blacks wanted to enter the North-end to sell drugs. The Mafia, at first, did not permit drugs anywhere in America where they were established. The older generation knew well enough how drugs destroyed youth.

So, one night, they took one of the dealers to the top of a building and threw him off. No drugs were sold in the North End, until, of course, the second generation of Mafia decided to take over the business. (This story Puzo repeated somewhat in his book, the Godfather, if you read it or see the film, though in another context.)

Which is why the Italian-Americans of Boston's North End tolerated the Mafia for a long, long time.

The security of one's self and one's family is paramount. In a democracy we will vote for the party that gives us the personal security that we need to a sufficient level -- and we will vote out of power the party that will not. And when neither party will do the job, we'll turn to whoever will.

As regards security, we are all "independent voters", methinks. And a strong police force is always necessary, but rarely sufficient. Lead-head proved well that a PotUS can neuter market regulation easy enough to satisfy his BigBusiness cronies.

Reply Mar 05, 2010 at 02:02 AM

gordon said...
Since Thomas Frank's WSJ review is paywalled, I went looking for another review. Eventually I found this one:

http://www.rebelnews.org/opinion/money/193103-barry-c-lynns-qcornered-the-new-monopoly-capitalism-and-economics-of-destructionq

but I didn't find many.

I did find one hostile one, here:

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/02/05/4608194.htm

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 03:12 PM

Goldilocksisableachblond said in reply to gordon...
gordon,

You can see a 1/27/10 video of Lynn discussing his book here :

http://growth.newamerica.net/events/2010/cornered

Also , I think C-Span's BookTV had him on recently. Their search box would probably pull it up. Sometimes you have to wait for the next live airing , if it hasn't been archived yet.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 03:23 PM

alan said...
My guess is that the public at large will not really grasp the full scope of the past half century of looting and fraud until well after the second leg of W's W gets going.

Reply Mar 04, 2010 at 08:16 PM

anne said...
Evan Harper:

The story I got in Econ 101 was that FTC bureaucrats were pointlessly keeping the businessman down from the Progressive Era through the 1970s, whereupon Robert Bork and Richard Posner proved that we actually don't need to worry about monopolies, and everyone lived happily ever after.

WaltFrench:

Ah, but the deal was only complete in the last couple of years whereupon the SCOTUS declared that the economic reasoning was “quaint” and outdated, so declared that the basis for Sherman was inadequate; any findings of harm would have to depend on case-by-case determination, rather than those musty notions called, “the Act.”

Very thoughtful of them to save Congress the trouble of amending their laws