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Post by ProVeritas on Jul 22, 2024 15:29:31 GMT
Well, at least you are finally starting to grasp the basics. What happens in most anarchies? Might Makes Right. In business terms Might means destroying / absorbing the competition. All The Best You will not understand anything with such vague statements. I've explained the mechanisms to you and hope you have learnt something. Economics is a subject I have studied, so I do have some expertise. If Free Market Economies do not (as you claim) tend toward Monopolies why is so much time, money and effort spent in regulating and enforcing against Monopolies? Surely it is counter productive, and counter intuitive to spend so much time, effort, and money in regulating and enforcing against something that never happens? Microsoft alone has over 200 acquisitions of other, often competitor, companies. Why do that if they are not working toward a Monopoly? Apple has 114, Google has 262. Starting to see the, frankly fucking obvious, pattern here yet? All The Best
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 22, 2024 21:07:37 GMT
You will not understand anything with such vague statements. I've explained the mechanisms to you and hope you have learnt something. Economics is a subject I have studied, so I do have some expertise. If Free Market Economies do not (as you claim) tend toward Monopolies why is so much time, money and effort spent in regulating and enforcing against Monopolies? Surely it is counter productive, and counter intuitive to spend so much time, effort, and money in regulating and enforcing against something that never happens? Microsoft alone has over 200 acquisitions of other, often competitor, companies. Why do that if they are not working toward a Monopoly? Apple has 114, Google has 262. Starting to see the, frankly fucking obvious, pattern here yet? All The Best I pointed out in an earlier post why the US is not a free market, so you are asking me a question I already answered. Also you are wrong in stating what I claimed. I said some free markets tend towards monopolies and any effort to stop monopolisation is helping to make the market freer and more efficient. I don't believe it is regulated enough myself, but it is a complicated business. What gets me is there are measures that could easily be taken to improve the market which are not. One of the stupidest things imaginable was to subsidise house buying.
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Post by ProVeritas on Jul 23, 2024 9:03:39 GMT
If Free Market Economies do not (as you claim) tend toward Monopolies why is so much time, money and effort spent in regulating and enforcing against Monopolies? Surely it is counter productive, and counter intuitive to spend so much time, effort, and money in regulating and enforcing against something that never happens? Microsoft alone has over 200 acquisitions of other, often competitor, companies. Why do that if they are not working toward a Monopoly? Apple has 114, Google has 262. Starting to see the, frankly fucking obvious, pattern here yet? All The Best I pointed out in an earlier post why the US is not a free market, so you are asking me a question I already answered. Also you are wrong in stating what I claimed. I said some free markets tend towards monopolies and any effort to stop monopolisation is helping to make the market freer and more efficient. I don't believe it is regulated enough myself, but it is a complicated business. What gets me is there are measures that could easily be taken to improve the market which are not. One of the stupidest things imaginable was to subsidise house buying. Anti-Monopoly Legislation does NOT make the Market "more efficient" it makes it less so. The primary purpose of The Market is to generate Profits. The most efficient way for a company to generate profit on any individual product is to be the ONLY supplier for that product. Because then Profit Margins can be increased with no need to spend money on developing a "better product" or investing in "better customer service". Both of those are necessary, and continually & increasingly necessary where a company has competition for sales with another company offering the same product. If two suppliers offer the same product you have to invest to make your product more desirable than the other guy's. If there is no competition there is no need for such investment. Furthermore, with no competition you can charge whatever you like for the product, because you can't be undercut. Both of which mean that any and all final price increases exclusively increase the Profit Margin. Which is the ultimate goal of the The Market. All The Best
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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Jul 23, 2024 9:14:31 GMT
You will not understand anything with such vague statements. I've explained the mechanisms to you and hope you have learnt something. Economics is a subject I have studied, so I do have some expertise. If Free Market Economies do not (as you claim) tend toward Monopolies why is so much time, money and effort spent in regulating and enforcing against Monopolies? Surely it is counter productive, and counter intuitive to spend so much time, effort, and money in regulating and enforcing against something that never happens? Microsoft alone has over 200 acquisitions of other, often competitor, companies. Why do that if they are not working toward a Monopoly? Apple has 114, Google has 262. Starting to see the, frankly fucking obvious, pattern here yet? All The Best As an aside(ish), Microsoft are blaming the EU's anti-monopoly rules for the recent CrowdStrike initiated IT outage. Apparently, Microsoft were required to give third party access to the Windows kernel and the third party crashed it. Maybe competition, sometimes aka undercutting, isn't always a benefit.
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Post by ProVeritas on Jul 23, 2024 9:23:57 GMT
Economics is NOT a stand-alone discipline.
It is wholly a product of two things: Maths, and Politics.
The ONLY "market forces" that exist are the socio-political desires of those who control the market.
So what then becomes vital is: 1) Who controls the Market? 2) In whose interests do they exercise that control?
For far, far too long the Market has been overly controlled by agencies and actors who do not serve, and have never served, the interests of the Body Politic.
Ratings Agencies can cripple a national economy with just one press announcement. But they are neither properly regulated nor remotely accountable. Almost all of them are owned by holding companies that also own the largest investment banks, and so there is a clear conflict of interest.
It was these Ratings Agencies deliberately "mis-rating" the MBSes and CDOs that led, directly, to the Sub-Prime Crisis, that led to the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis, that then led to two decades of austerity. Were any of them ever held accouyntable? No, of course not.
Economics as a discrete discipline is a con; designed to hide the real levers of control of "the market" to make it sound that things like "austerity", a broken housing market, chronically underfunded public services etc., are inevitable and beyond the control of anyone, rather than being what they actually are: Political CHOICES taken in the interests of a super-tiny demographic group.
All The Best
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Post by ProVeritas on Jul 23, 2024 9:28:04 GMT
If Free Market Economies do not (as you claim) tend toward Monopolies why is so much time, money and effort spent in regulating and enforcing against Monopolies? Surely it is counter productive, and counter intuitive to spend so much time, effort, and money in regulating and enforcing against something that never happens? Microsoft alone has over 200 acquisitions of other, often competitor, companies. Why do that if they are not working toward a Monopoly? Apple has 114, Google has 262. Starting to see the, frankly fucking obvious, pattern here yet? All The Best As an aside(ish), Microsoft are blaming the EU's anti-monopoly rules for the recent CrowdStrike initiated IT outage. Apparently, Microsoft were required to give third party access to the Windows kernel and the third party crashed it. Maybe competition, sometimes aka undercutting, isn't always a benefit. I see your point. I counter with: If Microsoft had not been permitted to create a near-monopoly on business IT services then far less of the global economy would have been affected. Microsoft 365 has 46% of the global share of Office Suite Technologies, Google's G Suite has 48%. Such dominance by just two providers is extremely dangerous, and is a disaster waiting to happen. More competition could have prevented the CrowdStrike fiasco. PS: Big Multinational that desires a Global Monopoly blames anti-monopoly regulation for a problem caused by near monopoly. Who'd have guessed? All The Best
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Post by Orac on Jul 23, 2024 9:38:05 GMT
I pointed out in an earlier post why the US is not a free market, so you are asking me a question I already answered. Also you are wrong in stating what I claimed. I said some free markets tend towards monopolies and any effort to stop monopolisation is helping to make the market freer and more efficient. I don't believe it is regulated enough myself, but it is a complicated business. What gets me is there are measures that could easily be taken to improve the market which are not. One of the stupidest things imaginable was to subsidise house buying. Anti-Monopoly Legislation does NOT make the Market "more efficient" it makes it less so. The primary purpose of The Market is to generate Profits. The most efficient way for a company to generate profit on any individual product is to be the ONLY supplier for that product. No - The purpose of the market is to allow efficient exchange of effort. Monopolies can be inefficient because they can create an inefficient exchange of effort. It's not always the case though.
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Post by The Squeezed Middle on Jul 23, 2024 9:44:24 GMT
As an aside(ish), Microsoft are blaming the EU's anti-monopoly rules for the recent CrowdStrike initiated IT outage. Apparently, Microsoft were required to give third party access to the Windows kernel and the third party crashed it. Maybe competition, sometimes aka undercutting, isn't always a benefit. I see your point. I counter with: If Microsoft had not been permitted to create a near-monopoly on business IT services then far less of the global economy would have been affected. Microsoft 365 has 46% of the global share of Office Suite Technologies, Google's G Suite has 48%. Such dominance by just two providers is extremely dangerous, and is a disaster waiting to happen. More competition could have prevented the CrowdStrike fiasco. PS: Big Multinational that desires a Global Monopoly blames anti-monopoly regulation for a problem caused by near monopoly. Who'd have guessed? All The Best Also a fair point. But there again, any company that offers the product with the widest appeal is going to end up as the market leader. In their day, Coca-Cola, the Ford Motor Co and Microsoft have all occupied that niche. Whether that's good, bad or indifferent I don't know but clumsy anti-monopoly legislation is clearly not without issues either.
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Post by Orac on Jul 23, 2024 9:51:52 GMT
I see your point. I counter with: If Microsoft had not been permitted to create a near-monopoly on business IT services then far less of the global economy would have been affected. Microsoft 365 has 46% of the global share of Office Suite Technologies, Google's G Suite has 48%. Such dominance by just two providers is extremely dangerous, and is a disaster waiting to happen. More competition could have prevented the CrowdStrike fiasco. PS: Big Multinational that desires a Global Monopoly blames anti-monopoly regulation for a problem caused by near monopoly. Who'd have guessed? All The Best Whether that's good, bad or indifferent I don't know but clumsy anti-monopoly legislation is clearly not without issues either. One thing to bear in mind is that the people enforcing an interpreting anti-monopoly legislation themselves have a monopoly
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 23, 2024 11:01:54 GMT
I pointed out in an earlier post why the US is not a free market, so you are asking me a question I already answered. Also you are wrong in stating what I claimed. I said some free markets tend towards monopolies and any effort to stop monopolisation is helping to make the market freer and more efficient. I don't believe it is regulated enough myself, but it is a complicated business. What gets me is there are measures that could easily be taken to improve the market which are not. One of the stupidest things imaginable was to subsidise house buying. *Anti-Monopoly Legislation does NOT make the Market "more efficient" it makes it less so. The primary purpose of The Market is to generate Profits. The most efficient way for a company to generate profit on any individual product is to be the ONLY supplier for that product. Because then Profit Margins can be increased with no need to spend money on developing a "better product" or investing in "better customer service". Both of those are necessary, and continually & increasingly necessary where a company has competition for sales with another company offering the same product. If two suppliers offer the same product you have to invest to make your product more desirable than the other guy's. If there is no competition there is no need for such investment. Furthermore, with no competition you can charge whatever you like for the product, because you can't be undercut. Both of which mean that any and all final price increases exclusively increase the Profit Margin. Which is the ultimate goal of the The Market. All The Best * I'll make a clarification in that. If we consider the aggregate market, as per the entire UK market of trade, having an organisation like the Monopolies and Mergers Commission does make the market more efficient. It depends on the sector though, so blocking a merger in steel production might do the reverse and put the price of steel higher than if it never blocked a steel merger, because of the large economy of scale. However, you would expect such a commission to apply the regulation in an intelligent way, so all moves it makes helps the price in the market to drop via stronger competition.
Regarding the rest of your post, I think you are angling at an important flaw which is real. The problem is when you have firms that issue public shares. These are funded by venture capitalists who make money by monopolising markets. Typically someone say at Stanford would come up with a new technology, get venture capital funding and then this will go through various rounds of funding where either the project dries up of funds if it is deemed to be a wrong'un or else the share capital grows, but the percentage of shares the founder owns is a diminishing percentage and way into the minority. So what you have is a firm that is controlled by the shareholders, and a lot of funding comes from huge pension funds.
This arrangement means any firm with a huge capital available can buy up every firm in a particular market. The shareholders can easily buy and sell shares, so if a merger is likely then they will be offered a large bonus on their shares which comes about via the extra profit of doing as you say and becoming the sole supplier in the market. However one must be careful to distinguish between those and mergers where there is a synergy. In some mergers you have a position where a business relies on one major supplier and they can only sell the product via the work of the two firms, e.g. a firm selling wheels, needs a firm making the tyres, and since tyres must work with the wheels it makes sense to integrate that operation into one firm, so you have one management deciding on both tyre issiues and the wheels they need to work with. The closer the two teams are the better the final product, so in that case you are vertically integrating and this can increase efficiency without damaging competition.
In noting the above, I used an example earlier where restaurant are considered quite a free market. Those family restaurants in a particular location are unlikely to all sell to one monopolist. It's not like selling your shares. Owning and running a restaurant is a big commitment. Similarly Ebay, and Alibaba are quite competitive markets due to the number of sellers. It would be hard work to buy up every Ebay seller, and new ones could just pop up at a drop of a hat, which is the opposite end of the spectrum to say aerospace companies which are huge complex operations.
Talking of stupid government rules though, did you know the tax system heavily biases in favour of a business owner to sell his firm due to a capital gains relief mechanism. This is so anti-free market it should cause an outrage, but it's one of those details people never talk about. The devil is often in the detail.
How all this relates to the high street by the way, is those who own the properties are more than likely funded out of huge pension funds. These firms don't need to innovate, as you pointed out in your post. It is cheaper just to monopolise the market, hence why half the properties are being utilised at zero percent. That's like throwing money away.
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