We should redefine monopoly according to effects rather than numbers of companies or percentage of markets. There are few actual mono monopolies. There are quadropolies and septopolies all over, with few enough players that surreptitious price fixing is not difficult. There are multiple quadropolies in agriculture that control 75+% of the US market, from meat packing to corn seed.
The DOJ is now investigating the six or so companies that have been buying up residential real estate and colluding through an online real estate portal. No one of them alone would be considered a monopoly, but the cumulative effect is the same. As a group they should be regulated as a monopoly.
I commented on your NY Times piece today, Nov. 12, 2024 about inflation and remedies:
William Neil
Maryland29m ago
Do you really think that the Democratic Party and the communication means at its disposal would be able to effectively take your analysis and remedies and communicate them to the public, or even to coordinate a coherent response among their factions - racial, cultural and economic - much less allies who are also capitalist competitors. You must have forgotten that key word among good private sector strivers and the American Dream, as it stands today: the C word is not "cooperation" it is Competition from cradle to grave, much closer to Freuds darkest visions than Coach Walz's hokey take.
I think a public task force that did the Harvard Case studies method of likely gouging firms and being blunt with the findings as the basis of a one year price freeze is necessary. Is it possible with all that author Mark Blyth told us about shifting paradigms within the economics profession itself in his 2002 book "Great Transformations." Probably not. And hence: "All Power to the Private Sector!" The profession itself has so shrunken the capacity of the public/politics to offer counterveiling tools to present day Neoliberal Global Capitalism that it is a key part of the problem. Only the Sanders/AOC wing of the party grasps the task and their results tell how impotent a new left populism is today. Events can change that. Meanwhiile the profession itself is comfortable and well off, and - like Krugman and Summers - clueless.
We should redefine monopoly according to effects rather than numbers of companies or percentage of markets. There are few actual mono monopolies. There are quadropolies and septopolies all over, with few enough players that surreptitious price fixing is not difficult. There are multiple quadropolies in agriculture that control 75+% of the US market, from meat packing to corn seed.
The DOJ is now investigating the six or so companies that have been buying up residential real estate and colluding through an online real estate portal. No one of them alone would be considered a monopoly, but the cumulative effect is the same. As a group they should be regulated as a monopoly.
I commented on your NY Times piece today, Nov. 12, 2024 about inflation and remedies:
William Neil
Maryland29m ago
Do you really think that the Democratic Party and the communication means at its disposal would be able to effectively take your analysis and remedies and communicate them to the public, or even to coordinate a coherent response among their factions - racial, cultural and economic - much less allies who are also capitalist competitors. You must have forgotten that key word among good private sector strivers and the American Dream, as it stands today: the C word is not "cooperation" it is Competition from cradle to grave, much closer to Freuds darkest visions than Coach Walz's hokey take.
I think a public task force that did the Harvard Case studies method of likely gouging firms and being blunt with the findings as the basis of a one year price freeze is necessary. Is it possible with all that author Mark Blyth told us about shifting paradigms within the economics profession itself in his 2002 book "Great Transformations." Probably not. And hence: "All Power to the Private Sector!" The profession itself has so shrunken the capacity of the public/politics to offer counterveiling tools to present day Neoliberal Global Capitalism that it is a key part of the problem. Only the Sanders/AOC wing of the party grasps the task and their results tell how impotent a new left populism is today. Events can change that. Meanwhiile the profession itself is comfortable and well off, and - like Krugman and Summers - clueless.
Reply3 RecommendShare