Sometimes I feel like this is a much larger part of corporate dominance in my lifetime (I was born in the mid-eighties), than lobbying and bribery. I grew up in South Africa and I’ve lived in Canada for 13 years. In both those places people (particularly white, particularly men, but many others too!) from gen-x and up just believe wholeheartedly in Chicago School ideas. Private is better than public, bigger is better than smaller, built is better than wild. Inflation is bad, strikes are bad, regulation is bad. I don’t think Canada’s monopoly friendly government is evil or captured, it’s just full of commerce-grad MBA bean-counter boomer and gen-X dads who learnt economics in the 80s and 90s in commerce faculties who taught Chicago School ideas like they’re the laws of the physical universe. And now they believe that “hipster Brandeis antitrusters” and “radical environmentalists” are the children, and they’re the adults. While the world literally burns and our economy has ossified into a fully Soviet experience.
The problem, as they say, is "the system" - a system which prizes "efficiency" and "productivity" uber alles - by those metrics the Nazi death camps were the epitome of success in the "business model of life - hey, low overhead - how much does a room and some gas cost, high productivity, what 6 million, ROI pretty high within the context of their value system. The question, of course, is what were they producing?
Hannah Arendt described the banality of evil - " The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.
Hannah Arendt "
So the folks running our Gov't are "terribly normal" - as Trump would say, "there are good people on both sides" - immersed in the various cultures of the day - so the fact that "consolidation" is believed to increase "efficiency" and "productivity", in the market fundamentalism that permeates the US economy - it doesn't seem to much matter what it is efficient at producing ...
I remember having a discussion once around that proverbial kitchen table - ranting about how poorly some business was treating people and saying "it's immoral!" And without batting an eye the other party simply said "Morality has nothing to do with it." I was a bit shocked, though i shouldn't have been - and Ithought, though I don't remember if i said, - That is precisely the problem ...
So is a sugar conglomerate "immoral" (never mind whether or not it's a "sweet deal") - all depends, now doesn't it ....
I was stunned to see that the Antitrust Division flat out called the FDA a "captured" agency. That is pretty damning. I would like to see the transcript and would like to see the media reporting more on this.
Voters from both parties would eat this up and the press would sell tons of clicks, downloads and views...But, errrrr their advertisers would not be thrilled.
Someone needs to give Barbara Fecso a lesson in Economics101. Sounds like she has no idea what a monopoly is and how it gives corporations market power to take excess profits and leads directly to income inequality, harming 90% of Americans.
Sometimes I feel like this is a much larger part of corporate dominance in my lifetime (I was born in the mid-eighties), than lobbying and bribery. I grew up in South Africa and I’ve lived in Canada for 13 years. In both those places people (particularly white, particularly men, but many others too!) from gen-x and up just believe wholeheartedly in Chicago School ideas. Private is better than public, bigger is better than smaller, built is better than wild. Inflation is bad, strikes are bad, regulation is bad. I don’t think Canada’s monopoly friendly government is evil or captured, it’s just full of commerce-grad MBA bean-counter boomer and gen-X dads who learnt economics in the 80s and 90s in commerce faculties who taught Chicago School ideas like they’re the laws of the physical universe. And now they believe that “hipster Brandeis antitrusters” and “radical environmentalists” are the children, and they’re the adults. While the world literally burns and our economy has ossified into a fully Soviet experience.
Excellent analysis! -
The problem, as they say, is "the system" - a system which prizes "efficiency" and "productivity" uber alles - by those metrics the Nazi death camps were the epitome of success in the "business model of life - hey, low overhead - how much does a room and some gas cost, high productivity, what 6 million, ROI pretty high within the context of their value system. The question, of course, is what were they producing?
Hannah Arendt described the banality of evil - " The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.
Hannah Arendt "
So the folks running our Gov't are "terribly normal" - as Trump would say, "there are good people on both sides" - immersed in the various cultures of the day - so the fact that "consolidation" is believed to increase "efficiency" and "productivity", in the market fundamentalism that permeates the US economy - it doesn't seem to much matter what it is efficient at producing ...
I remember having a discussion once around that proverbial kitchen table - ranting about how poorly some business was treating people and saying "it's immoral!" And without batting an eye the other party simply said "Morality has nothing to do with it." I was a bit shocked, though i shouldn't have been - and Ithought, though I don't remember if i said, - That is precisely the problem ...
So is a sugar conglomerate "immoral" (never mind whether or not it's a "sweet deal") - all depends, now doesn't it ....
I was stunned to see that the Antitrust Division flat out called the FDA a "captured" agency. That is pretty damning. I would like to see the transcript and would like to see the media reporting more on this.
Voters from both parties would eat this up and the press would sell tons of clicks, downloads and views...But, errrrr their advertisers would not be thrilled.
Someone needs to give Barbara Fecso a lesson in Economics101. Sounds like she has no idea what a monopoly is and how it gives corporations market power to take excess profits and leads directly to income inequality, harming 90% of Americans.
All economists are corrupt.
note: fecso, fesco, it must be one or the other ;-)