• LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 months ago

    I’m sorry you’re under the impression that the economy is controlled equally by tens of thousands of corporations. Its much more like 2 dozen control nearly all money that presently exists. They wake up everyday and fix prices. They’ve been doing it a lot ever since 2008 and the utter downfall of consumer protections. I also have no fucking clue what you mean when you say that not fixing prices is in their best interests?? Like, you realize that by price fixing they make billions of dollars more than they should be? How tf is making even more money not in the interest of a corporation? They literally profit off of wars. Any possible thing that increases the amount of capital they generate is in their own best interests. Even employing children, or slaves. Capitalism is designed specifically to be exploitative of as many people as possible to generate as much capital as possible.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’m sorry you’re under the impression that the economy is controlled equally by tens of thousands of corporations. Its much more like 2 dozen control nearly all money that presently exists.

      There are 8 million businesses in the U.S. We have problems with monopolization, but to the level where a cross-economy price fixing scheme could possibly be implemented, we are not at that point. That’s an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof, not something to just believe dogmatically because you don’t like capitalism.

      I also have no fucking clue what you mean when you say that not fixing prices is in their best interests??

      You could start by just asking me. This is basic game theory. Market price of a good is 10 dollars, ACME and BLLC corp meet and fix prices at 15 dollars. ACME corp goes to market at 15 dollars, BLLC corp goes against the secret agreement and goes to market at 10 dollars. BLLC gets ACME corp’s customers as long as they retain their price at 15. Now take the same example and spread it across hundreds, thousands of companies, keeping in mind that this level of coordination would leave behind proof, witnesses, and take an extraordinary level of coordination. Non-participation in a price fixing cartel for a minority company could mean capturing the entire market, and anyone who was participating would immediately be incentivized to exit it.

      This is what is being posited, versus the dirt simple explanation that more money has been printed and has thus decreased in value. And we know a ton of money was printed.

      Price-fixing cartels aren’t impossible, however, they do become completely impossible to create or maintain at a scale like that. There is simply way too much competition. It’s an extremely elaborate, poorly substantiated theory to explain something there’s an obvious, well-substantiated explanation for already. I don’t know how you guys think about applying the scientific method, but to me, that ain’t it.

      • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        This is basic game theory

        Perhaps real life is more complicated than something you can read in an introductory textbook.