There is not enough competition in our free market economy and it’s not because people are too lazy to compete but because the dominant players use regulations to keep a grip on lucrative economic profits in their industries. It’s enshittification but in real life. https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/economic-termites-are-everywhere Economic Termites Are Everywhere Why is this economy so difficult to manage? The macro statistics are hiding the experience of being cheated. Matt Stoller Today I want to start with a comment by a colleague, Texas antitrust lawyer Basel Musharbash, observing a restaurant trying to do a renovation in Dallas. “Something funky is happening in the building materials supply chain,” he wrote . “A 3,000 sq. ft. commercial space in a strip mall shouldn’t cost $720,000 to renovate into an Italian food joint.” He’s right. It shouldn’t. And yet it does. This attitude of ‘something is very wrong with our society’ is everywhere now. Corporate procurement officers just assume costs are going up, it’s in budget projections for the Defense Department, and we expect cost overruns on everything. ‘Inflation’ is now a catch-all for a basic view that stuff is just going to suck more and more. So what’s going on? Today’s piece is about a concept I am going to call ‘economic termites,’ which are instances of monopolization big enough to make investors a huge amount of money, but not noticeable enough for most of us. An individual termite isn’t big enough to matter, but the existence of a termite is extremely bad news, because it means there are others. Add enough of them up, and you get our modern economic experience. The concept of an economic termite is the cousin to Cory Doctorow’s ‘enshittification’ or Yves Smith’s ‘crapification,’ terms that describe how a platform gradually degrades the quality of its service as it gains market power and gets pushed to extract cash by financiers. Economic termites describes where these same forces get into the mostly unseen business foundations of our society and profiteer. These termites are in the infrastructure or guts of business, like recruiting services, construction equipment or software, the industrial gasses that go into chemicals and electronics, and so forth. It’s the stuff you don’t see that makes our world turn, there’s fortunes to be made, and bottlenecks to foster. They also explain a dynamic we all face, a profound wariness in our society, a sense that stuff just costs more and is more difficult, for no discernible reason. Added up, these end up sapping our faith in the American system, because they make what seem like simple problems become not just unsolvable, but not even capable of being diagnosed. In this issue, I’ll cover some of the companies you don’t realize are gnawing at the foundation of our society - Verisign, Autodesk, Linde, Assa Abloy, Gracenote, and LinkedIn. And yes, there are legal tools to address them. But first we have to realize that these bottlenecks are everywhere.
Potential use of pinenes to improve localized insecticide injections targeting the western drywood termite https://academic.oup.com/jee/advanc...1/7675403?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
It is because like 11 companies own everything - they no longer compete, they have paid their way in congress to ignore the "No Monopolies" rules and have conglomerated to their hearts content. Now they can basically collude with themselves to elevate prices.... Our CONGRESS is bought and paid for by corporations to represent THEM and NOT US !!! First step, make Lobbying illegal if any money is involved.....and all these companies should be broken up. https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-everything-904b28425120 DD
The FTC is actively trying to block mergers. Tech isn't too happy about it and are starting to raise money for the other guy to win
Problem of the commons. I will repeat what Ive said before - the greatest check on greed for most of the 20th century was the fear of a communist revolution. **** Russia and China, but now that they are no longer the commie boogymen, but rather evolved into the new fascist boogymen, those who favor severe stratification of society for individual wealth have no internal checks on their personal greed, as the fear of an organic bottom-up revolution in society is basically dismissed out of hand. Again, **** the authoritarians of all stripes, but outside of the communist world, that fear of the hoi polloi was real and palpable for 75 years. Now the robber barrons no longer see them as snakes in the grass who could bite at any misstep, but rather sheep to be shorn for their wool.
Late Stage Capitalism is anti-innovation it becomes cheat to stifle innovation and competition than to compete If I make 10 billion a year on oil It's in my interest to buy out the new cars that run solar/water/wind for 3 billion dollars then hide it for the next 20 yrs So if new innovative progress tech comes available Old Tech can buy it and suppress it from the market far more easily If need be .. . . simply have them Wacked. Rocket River
Elon be like, listen to ME, boomers, don't let anyone work from home, it doesn't work! Make them drive (preferably TSLA). Trust me bro, I'm smarrrrrt
So you're telling me Elon bought out whoever made those Mr. Fusion juicers we saw in Back to the Future?
And importing puppies. They are a serious danger to our national security. What if Canada disrupts the puppy trade? Economy will crash and its the greedy [other side] fault.
