U.S. politics this decade has been marked by the tenuous revival of two previously dormant paradigms: the anti-monopoly tradition and developmentalism centered on industrial policy.
The political system has made it impossible to believe anyone. Even "experts" are not to be believed or trusted.
It would seem to be a no brainer, under the K.I.S.S. doctrine that if the USA is the number one market in the world, business' want to be involved in that system amd it would be in the best interest of business' in the US to have most of the population earn a wage that gives them money they can spend. The more the population is paid, the more they will spend, the more business' will make.
Simplicity is no longer a goal. Make it as complex as possible so the population has to rely on so called "experts" to understand anything.
Humans being human, taking care of number one is the only worldview to live by. And as long as that is true, nothing will really change for the better for all of us. Dems have honed the fear mongering to an unprecedented level. They can deliver the message. It's just the wrong message. And the Repubs have their message issue also. But the Dems being lost and leaderless, the only coherent message they have is fear. Much like the Republicans will be when the Dems eventually get in charge. And so it goes.
You are focusing on the forest, think about taking care of the trees and you will soon see a healthy forest.
Listen to what people want and give it to them.
People want to be safe in their home and in their community, so remove criminals from the community.
People want their children to be able to read, write, and compute. So see that the teachers drop everything and help the kids learn to read, write, and compute.
People want to help their family and neighbors in need. They don't feel an obligation to share their hard earned dollars with everyone who enters this country by breaking the law.
In other words, it's time for democrats to campaign on governing well.
So Justin, you’re saying we need to do better in many areas. Using a sports analogy, we need to win. But look at our team. Most of our elected representatives have scant knowledge of science, technology or even finance beyond what lobbyists tell them. It takes millions to run for public office at the federal level, and we all see how so many politicians retire fabulously wealthy. If we can’t get money out of politics, we’ll never attract the caliber of people we need to run a complex society. Even the best looking chimpanzees can’t build a skyscraper.
Policymakers and many policy advisors also have to update their thinking about how modern rentier income is increasingly being generated, and the new way labor is being monetized. Especially once the AI revolution gets going.
Ultimately, the conventional antitrust story is about suppressing the price pressures of wages. It says "Firm X uses outsized monopoly power to hold the prices of its products below break-even levels to seize market share, which then gets monetized into rents and superprofits." I.e., Firm X pays the same wages as its competitors to make its product/service, but its monopoly power allows to it to avoid fully pricing those wages into that product/service. Competing firms that can't do this, by contrast, have to price their products or services with the underlying wage bill fully included, and thus always operate at a disadvantage, and lose market share to, the monopolist.
But the underlying assumption there is always that it is the labor of wage-earners that's being monetized, because they operate the service or produce the product. And Big Tech doesn't work that way. AI outfits don't work that way. Wage-earners don't produce their primary income stream. Instead, they monetize mega-dossiers of *user* data, and the behavioral control over those users afforded to them by their algorithms. (which in turn require those mega-dossiers to work) That gets sold to advertising consultancies for superprofits. Wage-earners aren't a big part of the picture anymore.
The monopolies of the future will be (personal) information monopolies, and that's where antitrust has to focus. IMO, they should start with copyright law and people's rights to their own data, and work up from there.
Disagree: Trump is precisely the only guy who can "disentangle" the China problem and is doing so masterfully. The Canucks caved on their little tax just 24 hours after Trump responded. Tariff revenue already is through the roof. Chy-na is about to collapse in 20 different ways. And as Peter Zeihan notes, the U.S. is in perfect position.
Another excellent article from Vassallo. He seems to capture the idea of populist fusion quite well. It is not the Republicans (nor the Democrats if you swing the other way) that are the problem, it's the Establishment. I urge people to revisit the history of Standard Oil and anti-trust. It wasn't that Rockefeller ripped off consumers. He probably made them better off as consumers but that he used predatory pricing to destroy competitors, wiping out businesses as income producers similar to what Amazon and WalMart do today. (He also exploited workers and busted unions and he and his descendants are a major funder of The Groups. ) These are also true of the Walton heirs and Bezo's ex. After he took over the market he would increase the price he charged for kerosene (gasoline came later) but generally no more and often less than the ruined competitor was charging. In an era, when small or regional business was the economic engine of the country that was a big deal. Since then business strategy has gotten more sophisticated on both sides and the advantage has shifted back and forth between attack and defense. The Biden/Trump lawsuit against Google hopefully will bear fruit in other industries. Anti-dumping rules in trade policy have the same point. The EU has a lot of activity in this area but in their usual ham-handed way. I concur with Vassallo's assessment that it will take another crisis to force a reckoning. COVID policy did enormous damage to the non-monopolists that hasn't been fixed so when the next crisis arrives we need to be careful as to who exploits it.
The tax bill that is making it way through the sent is a surrender to China on advanced and clean energies. The majority of the Senate had decided that the U.S. cannot compete in the clean energy space and is leaving it to China to dominate that market across Europe, Asia, Latin American and Africa.
The political system has made it impossible to believe anyone. Even "experts" are not to be believed or trusted.
It would seem to be a no brainer, under the K.I.S.S. doctrine that if the USA is the number one market in the world, business' want to be involved in that system amd it would be in the best interest of business' in the US to have most of the population earn a wage that gives them money they can spend. The more the population is paid, the more they will spend, the more business' will make.
Simplicity is no longer a goal. Make it as complex as possible so the population has to rely on so called "experts" to understand anything.
Humans being human, taking care of number one is the only worldview to live by. And as long as that is true, nothing will really change for the better for all of us. Dems have honed the fear mongering to an unprecedented level. They can deliver the message. It's just the wrong message. And the Repubs have their message issue also. But the Dems being lost and leaderless, the only coherent message they have is fear. Much like the Republicans will be when the Dems eventually get in charge. And so it goes.
You are focusing on the forest, think about taking care of the trees and you will soon see a healthy forest.
Listen to what people want and give it to them.
People want to be safe in their home and in their community, so remove criminals from the community.
People want their children to be able to read, write, and compute. So see that the teachers drop everything and help the kids learn to read, write, and compute.
People want to help their family and neighbors in need. They don't feel an obligation to share their hard earned dollars with everyone who enters this country by breaking the law.
In other words, it's time for democrats to campaign on governing well.
Focus on good governance
So Justin, you’re saying we need to do better in many areas. Using a sports analogy, we need to win. But look at our team. Most of our elected representatives have scant knowledge of science, technology or even finance beyond what lobbyists tell them. It takes millions to run for public office at the federal level, and we all see how so many politicians retire fabulously wealthy. If we can’t get money out of politics, we’ll never attract the caliber of people we need to run a complex society. Even the best looking chimpanzees can’t build a skyscraper.
Policymakers and many policy advisors also have to update their thinking about how modern rentier income is increasingly being generated, and the new way labor is being monetized. Especially once the AI revolution gets going.
Ultimately, the conventional antitrust story is about suppressing the price pressures of wages. It says "Firm X uses outsized monopoly power to hold the prices of its products below break-even levels to seize market share, which then gets monetized into rents and superprofits." I.e., Firm X pays the same wages as its competitors to make its product/service, but its monopoly power allows to it to avoid fully pricing those wages into that product/service. Competing firms that can't do this, by contrast, have to price their products or services with the underlying wage bill fully included, and thus always operate at a disadvantage, and lose market share to, the monopolist.
But the underlying assumption there is always that it is the labor of wage-earners that's being monetized, because they operate the service or produce the product. And Big Tech doesn't work that way. AI outfits don't work that way. Wage-earners don't produce their primary income stream. Instead, they monetize mega-dossiers of *user* data, and the behavioral control over those users afforded to them by their algorithms. (which in turn require those mega-dossiers to work) That gets sold to advertising consultancies for superprofits. Wage-earners aren't a big part of the picture anymore.
The monopolies of the future will be (personal) information monopolies, and that's where antitrust has to focus. IMO, they should start with copyright law and people's rights to their own data, and work up from there.
Agree, a round of antitrust would be useful.
Disagree: Trump is precisely the only guy who can "disentangle" the China problem and is doing so masterfully. The Canucks caved on their little tax just 24 hours after Trump responded. Tariff revenue already is through the roof. Chy-na is about to collapse in 20 different ways. And as Peter Zeihan notes, the U.S. is in perfect position.
Another excellent article from Vassallo. He seems to capture the idea of populist fusion quite well. It is not the Republicans (nor the Democrats if you swing the other way) that are the problem, it's the Establishment. I urge people to revisit the history of Standard Oil and anti-trust. It wasn't that Rockefeller ripped off consumers. He probably made them better off as consumers but that he used predatory pricing to destroy competitors, wiping out businesses as income producers similar to what Amazon and WalMart do today. (He also exploited workers and busted unions and he and his descendants are a major funder of The Groups. ) These are also true of the Walton heirs and Bezo's ex. After he took over the market he would increase the price he charged for kerosene (gasoline came later) but generally no more and often less than the ruined competitor was charging. In an era, when small or regional business was the economic engine of the country that was a big deal. Since then business strategy has gotten more sophisticated on both sides and the advantage has shifted back and forth between attack and defense. The Biden/Trump lawsuit against Google hopefully will bear fruit in other industries. Anti-dumping rules in trade policy have the same point. The EU has a lot of activity in this area but in their usual ham-handed way. I concur with Vassallo's assessment that it will take another crisis to force a reckoning. COVID policy did enormous damage to the non-monopolists that hasn't been fixed so when the next crisis arrives we need to be careful as to who exploits it.
The tax bill that is making it way through the sent is a surrender to China on advanced and clean energies. The majority of the Senate had decided that the U.S. cannot compete in the clean energy space and is leaving it to China to dominate that market across Europe, Asia, Latin American and Africa.