Mike, I've quoted you on 'coopertition with our frenemies' more than once. Is that indeed an original Mike Green?
I'll make some space for Thiel's book, via your recommendation.
May I toss this idea into the mix? (quote from The Conversation, link below)
"Progressive writer Elizabeth Magie Phillips created Monopoly in 1904 to teach players about the dangers of wealth concentration. Originally called The Landlord’s Game, it celebrated the teachings of the anti-monopolist Henry George whose widely read book, Progress and Poverty, published in 1879, argued that governments did not have a right to tax labour. They only had a right to tax land."
Apologies in advance, I will do some self-shilling in this comment. Just wrote an article comparing the state of AI research at OpenAI and Google. Google seems to be ahead by a fair margin.
Wonder if the antitrust efforts might damage Google's AI position, though.
If anyone's interested in the state of AI - check it out!
Reading... Neoliberalism really is financialization. Neoliberalism is financial lobbying for a financier’s view of the world. It’s Wall Street’s view of the world. [It’s] the central bank’s view of the world. It’s not the industrialist’s view of the world, and it’s certainly not the wage-earner’s view of the world.
Fed believes that the way to make an economy grow is to make it poorer.
Solution is to move away from financialization and create the sort of industrially-focused, productively-focused economy that Americans needs.
Perhaps a third angle fits; competition between big corporates and government.
One could argue big corporates are winning, and therefore government will crack down. Of course the rhetoric will be that it's for the good of society and the people. In reality I feel that ie Meta coming with own currency and a metaverse etc is too much of a threat to current power structures. Beter to splinter them for controllability, from a governing perspective.
Why are people threatened by having to respect other people? Why is it weakness to be polite? If you use language that turns off or actively offends the people involved, why is that a good thing?
"Aww, you're being too sensitive."
Why, is being insensitive a virtue? What kind of coarse, reductive, brain-dead macho is that?
A lot of the woke reaction functions are disproportionate, with a combination of confirmation bias and false victim narrative setting a worldview which authorizes a person to be selfish while blaming others for their own actions. Someone else ruined my life before I was even born, thus if I ruin someone else's life I am doing a social good to make the world more fair.
Woke, when taken to the extreme, means the feelings of repeatedly convicted violent criminals are more important and the lives they have ruined or outright ended & anyone who cares about inputs or incentive structures which lead to bad outcomes gets labeled as greedy, xenophobic, racist, sexist, or some similar claptrap ... and the solution to every political failure is to spend more money doing what has aggressively failed since the policy was implemented. Look at the stats for children born into single parent homes since the Great Society social "safety" nets went into effect.
Capitalism is voluntarism, which includes property and profit.
Profits, rather than all knowing elites, motivate innovation and the supply of every good and service.
Competition emerges naturally to limit profits.
The problem is that monopolies tend to erect unnatural barriers to entry through anti-competitive actions. These include M&A, political lobbying, and using their market power to act directly against new entrants.
Therefore, monopolies should be restricted from ALL these anti-competitive actions.
Provocative as usual. How are you defining "monopoly" given the list of companies from the 1960s? The mix of those four (AT&T, IBM, GM, Sears) is... interesting. Market (pricing/margin) power? Size of revenues? Market share?
Ah, I wondered... I had an econ professor tell me once upon a time that the U.S. government had a terrible track record of attempting to prove monopoly power in cases like this. The cases usually hinged on specific actions taken by organizations that were defined as potentially contributing to seek or maintain monopoly power rather than having the status of monopoly power. The relevant laws (Clayton/Robinson-Patman) are written not to criminalize monopoly power which is difficult to prove, but rather, to criminalize specific behaviors that are defined to be anticompetitive in nature regardless of monopoly power. So... I had to ask ChatGPT about the cases... ;-) Here's the Sears answer - "The court did not make a formal finding that Sears had monopoly power in the retail industry. The antitrust lawsuit against Sears was settled before a formal decision was reached on the merits of the case, with Sears agreeing to divest some of its retail stores and refrain from certain business practices that the government deemed anti-competitive." Here's the IBM answer - "Yes, the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against IBM in the 1960s. The lawsuit was filed in 1969 and accused IBM of engaging in anti-competitive practices to maintain its monopoly power in the computer industry. The case was eventually dismissed in the 1980s after a series of appeals and court rulings." Here's the GM answer - "Yes, as part of the settlement of the antitrust lawsuit against General Motors, the company was found to have monopoly power in the automobile industry. The settlement required General Motors to divest some of its assets and refrain from certain anti-competitive practices." Here's the AT&T answer - "Yes, the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against AT&T in the 1970s. The lawsuit was filed in 1974 and accused AT&T of engaging in anti-competitive practices to maintain its monopoly power in the telecommunications industry. The case was eventually settled in 1982, with AT&T agreeing to divest its local telephone companies, known as the 'Baby Bells.'" That same econ prof (rather well published, actually) maintained that AT&T was only a monopoly in most of its markets because of government regulations that established its monopoly pricing powers in those markets. It was the only one of the four companies that the prof would consider to have achieved monopoly power based on AT&T's market (margin/pricing) power. The others, she did not consider to have ever been able to attain monopoly power. The anticompetitive behaviors were another story separate from monopoly power, though. Her point was to be very careful in using the term monopoly. I guess the lesson stuck with me, so I found myself asking how you defined the companies as monopolies.
Per your mission statement "But if you want to share the ride, join me in buying a few shares of FIG and come along" I have purchased my first thousand shares.
Mike, I've quoted you on 'coopertition with our frenemies' more than once. Is that indeed an original Mike Green?
I'll make some space for Thiel's book, via your recommendation.
May I toss this idea into the mix? (quote from The Conversation, link below)
"Progressive writer Elizabeth Magie Phillips created Monopoly in 1904 to teach players about the dangers of wealth concentration. Originally called The Landlord’s Game, it celebrated the teachings of the anti-monopolist Henry George whose widely read book, Progress and Poverty, published in 1879, argued that governments did not have a right to tax labour. They only had a right to tax land."
I guess Parker Bros. found a way to game the game. https://theconversation.com/monopoly-was-designed-100-years-ago-to-teach-the-dangers-of-capitalism-112198
Many thanks for these. Always looking forward to the "Yes, I give a FIG" in my inbox.
Apologies in advance, I will do some self-shilling in this comment. Just wrote an article comparing the state of AI research at OpenAI and Google. Google seems to be ahead by a fair margin.
Wonder if the antitrust efforts might damage Google's AI position, though.
If anyone's interested in the state of AI - check it out!
https://sergey.substack.com/p/google-is-leading-the-agi-race-but
Reading... Neoliberalism really is financialization. Neoliberalism is financial lobbying for a financier’s view of the world. It’s Wall Street’s view of the world. [It’s] the central bank’s view of the world. It’s not the industrialist’s view of the world, and it’s certainly not the wage-earner’s view of the world.
Fed believes that the way to make an economy grow is to make it poorer.
Solution is to move away from financialization and create the sort of industrially-focused, productively-focused economy that Americans needs.
You might like this article about elites displacing experts https://www.overcomingbias.com/2023/01/are-elites-displacing-experts.html
Good read, been a while since at that website, will have to put back in my fav...
Perhaps a third angle fits; competition between big corporates and government.
One could argue big corporates are winning, and therefore government will crack down. Of course the rhetoric will be that it's for the good of society and the people. In reality I feel that ie Meta coming with own currency and a metaverse etc is too much of a threat to current power structures. Beter to splinter them for controllability, from a governing perspective.
WOKE - you said the magic word, and I'm out.
Why are people threatened by having to respect other people? Why is it weakness to be polite? If you use language that turns off or actively offends the people involved, why is that a good thing?
"Aww, you're being too sensitive."
Why, is being insensitive a virtue? What kind of coarse, reductive, brain-dead macho is that?
Appreciate you stopping by.
Why is being a selfish fake victim a virtue?
A lot of the woke reaction functions are disproportionate, with a combination of confirmation bias and false victim narrative setting a worldview which authorizes a person to be selfish while blaming others for their own actions. Someone else ruined my life before I was even born, thus if I ruin someone else's life I am doing a social good to make the world more fair.
Woke, when taken to the extreme, means the feelings of repeatedly convicted violent criminals are more important and the lives they have ruined or outright ended & anyone who cares about inputs or incentive structures which lead to bad outcomes gets labeled as greedy, xenophobic, racist, sexist, or some similar claptrap ... and the solution to every political failure is to spend more money doing what has aggressively failed since the policy was implemented. Look at the stats for children born into single parent homes since the Great Society social "safety" nets went into effect.
Capitalism and competition are NOT opposites.
Capitalism is voluntarism, which includes property and profit.
Profits, rather than all knowing elites, motivate innovation and the supply of every good and service.
Competition emerges naturally to limit profits.
The problem is that monopolies tend to erect unnatural barriers to entry through anti-competitive actions. These include M&A, political lobbying, and using their market power to act directly against new entrants.
Therefore, monopolies should be restricted from ALL these anti-competitive actions.
Provocative as usual. How are you defining "monopoly" given the list of companies from the 1960s? The mix of those four (AT&T, IBM, GM, Sears) is... interesting. Market (pricing/margin) power? Size of revenues? Market share?
Those are all companies targeted by DoJ/FTC actions in the period
Ah, I wondered... I had an econ professor tell me once upon a time that the U.S. government had a terrible track record of attempting to prove monopoly power in cases like this. The cases usually hinged on specific actions taken by organizations that were defined as potentially contributing to seek or maintain monopoly power rather than having the status of monopoly power. The relevant laws (Clayton/Robinson-Patman) are written not to criminalize monopoly power which is difficult to prove, but rather, to criminalize specific behaviors that are defined to be anticompetitive in nature regardless of monopoly power. So... I had to ask ChatGPT about the cases... ;-) Here's the Sears answer - "The court did not make a formal finding that Sears had monopoly power in the retail industry. The antitrust lawsuit against Sears was settled before a formal decision was reached on the merits of the case, with Sears agreeing to divest some of its retail stores and refrain from certain business practices that the government deemed anti-competitive." Here's the IBM answer - "Yes, the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against IBM in the 1960s. The lawsuit was filed in 1969 and accused IBM of engaging in anti-competitive practices to maintain its monopoly power in the computer industry. The case was eventually dismissed in the 1980s after a series of appeals and court rulings." Here's the GM answer - "Yes, as part of the settlement of the antitrust lawsuit against General Motors, the company was found to have monopoly power in the automobile industry. The settlement required General Motors to divest some of its assets and refrain from certain anti-competitive practices." Here's the AT&T answer - "Yes, the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against AT&T in the 1970s. The lawsuit was filed in 1974 and accused AT&T of engaging in anti-competitive practices to maintain its monopoly power in the telecommunications industry. The case was eventually settled in 1982, with AT&T agreeing to divest its local telephone companies, known as the 'Baby Bells.'" That same econ prof (rather well published, actually) maintained that AT&T was only a monopoly in most of its markets because of government regulations that established its monopoly pricing powers in those markets. It was the only one of the four companies that the prof would consider to have achieved monopoly power based on AT&T's market (margin/pricing) power. The others, she did not consider to have ever been able to attain monopoly power. The anticompetitive behaviors were another story separate from monopoly power, though. Her point was to be very careful in using the term monopoly. I guess the lesson stuck with me, so I found myself asking how you defined the companies as monopolies.
Per your mission statement "But if you want to share the ride, join me in buying a few shares of FIG and come along" I have purchased my first thousand shares.