
UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism” - Futurebot
https://promarket.org/un-study-warns-growing-economic-concentration-leads-rentier-capitalism/
======
programmingpol
As a Republican elected official in a southeastern state, I have a front-row
seat to what this article points at.

The road construction industry used to be a great opportunity for small
business people to create for themselves a substantial income. These days, all
the companies in our area are owned by conglomerates, backed by billion dollar
financial institutions. If you were to risk a million or two or an asphalt
plant, they will undercut your prices till you go bankrupt, then inflate their
prices once again. The two companies in our area will bid on all of our
projects, but it's clear they are in cahoots when it comes to their pricing.

By our estimates, the taxpayers are overpaying by at least 15% - 20%. In my
mind, this robs others of opportunity and transfers wealth from tax-paying
citizens to billion dollar companies.

No one points this out because the road builders give a lot to politicians. Go
against them, and they'll spend enough to have the public label you a RINO
which, in this neck of the woods, can get you booted from office.

I've wished for some time that someone could create a modular asphalt plant
that can be packed up on trucks and taken to wherever the job site is. I think
companies like this could help regulate prices and make a lot of money.

~~~
fny
Your problem is that big business has conflated free-market capitalism with
the right to monopoly and convinced your constituency that anti-trust
regulation is destructive to a free market when, in truth, oligopoly leads to
corruption of the free-market and a farce of capitalism.

You need to work on educating your citizenship gradually until they understand
the conditions wherein capitalism actually works. That way they might see why
breaking up big busines and preventing M&A is often the Right Thing™️ and
conservative to do.

~~~
ethbro
Pretty sure parent is aware what "their problem" is, seeing as they have a
front seat to it. ;)

And "educating the citizenry" as a feasible tactic in local races is an
exercise in futility. For the cost of an educational campaign, his or her
opponent (or their supporters) could run attack advertising that would
certainly lose parent the election.

Aggregating like businesses and pushing for change higher up the political
food chain is more effective, albeit not without its own risks.

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beebmam
This reminds me of a book called Four Futures, that explores different
economic futures that humanity might face, and it just so happens that one of
those futures is Rentism, similar to what is described in this piece.

~~~
huragok
[https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-
futures](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures) in which we get to
decide (or have decided for us):

\- Egalitarianism and Abundance (Communism)

\- Hierarchy and Abundance (Rentism)

\- Egalitarianism and Scarcity (Socialism)

\- Hierarchy and Scarcity (Exterminism)

------
cyphereal
The article is very hand-wavy about the core rent seeking argument. There is
much discussion about factors such as productivity improvements concentration
of market power and mergers and acquisitions.

From TFA: "says Blankenburg, “the data show very clearly that the means used
to obtain these profits cannot be reduced to the use of productive
technologies.” Other mechanisms, such as lobbying or mergers and acquisitions,
the authors find, have played a significant role in enhancing the market power
of dominant companies. “You can show quite clearly how surplus profits
increase with mergers and acquisitions, or how changes in regulation that
favor control over intellectual property rights for large corporations have a
pretty-instant impact on the profit performance of those companies,"

That's the sum total of the rent seeking argument. There is nothing in there
demonstrating use of IP to extract rent (which, arguably isn't even rent
seeking behaviour, but for the sake of argument may be granted here). My
intuition is that profit extraction due to IP for the very large companies is
most obvious in pharmaceuticals, but that's just my guess?

There are a few interesting points in this article, but it's weakly written.

------
Gustomaximus
This is a super interesting. 2 interesting bits of history I feel people need
to consider on this topic;

Firstly in my limited discussions I'm surprised how many people fail to
recognise economic equality the west see's today is not normal. It's a ~70
year blip in 5,000 years of history that was heavily manufactured to be this
way. Not a result of 'capitalism' as many people I've seen discussing this
like to say. As 50 years ago most western countries had more government
managed economies than today.

And more interestingly, I wonder how society will react under democracy
assuming we move to the historic norm of increased wealth inequality. As
democracy in terms of masses having the vote is only about 100 years old. Less
for other non-white backgrounds. As before this voting was restricted to land
owners and men.

Anyway I would think democracy would act as a pressure value but maybe not.
Have a look at this list for how things played out over the years;

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_labor_issues_and_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_labor_issues_and_events)

~~~
nickthemagicman
This is a very interesting point. In the grand scheme of the human race is it
realistic to call 60's-80's America, the best time time the middle class has
ever had?

~~~
Gustomaximus
Best is very subjective. And I as an Australian look at this from that view. I
do think it would be fair to say this period gave 2 very core human benefits
to the masses better than any other period; security and opportunity.

Security being access to; income, housing and healthcare.

Opportunity being; social mobility and access to education.

IMO these 5 points should be the core goals of a functioning society. Outside
this much of the rest works itself out.

Oh and the other one I thought of while writing, we didn't have any great wars
during this time. Not to diminish Vietnam/Korea but the majority didn't
experience war like many previous modern era generations had.

------
jnordwick
Why isn't the conclusion that the political systems are too powerful then?
Regulatory capture and IP issues are the fault of a political system that can
wield too much power.

The limited government people would seem to have a strong case that power
should be removed from the political system since it is so easily corrupted.

I don't quite understand how the answer to a political system easily
manipulated is to make it even more powerful.

~~~
notacoward
Is the problem that governments have too much power, or that they place what
power they do have in the service of the rentiers instead of the people? The
more power you take away from government, the more government-like power
corporations themselves will wield directly. What kind of world will it be
when all essential services are provided - or withheld - at the whim of the
already powerful? When environmental or workplace regulation are replaced by
courts, and the courts themselves are "arbitration services" run by the very
same people you're suing, backed by security services run likewise? When the
unprofitable or unpopular become "outlaws" in the very real sense of being
denied basic services or protections afforded to the more compliant?

No, that dystopia - not a coincidence that so many SF writers have predicted
it - is not the direction we should go. Governments have a responsibility to
represent the people collectively where the people can not represent
themselves individually. True liberty requires that tension between people-
via-government and other kinds of power. It's awful that the government we
have is pulling on the wrong end of the rope, but saying they should drop it
entirely is practically the same. They should be pulling on _our_ side.

This "make government tiny" philosophy leads to oligarchy and neo-feudalism as
sure as Soviet communism did, for much the same reason. It's just another
tactic that the autocratically minded use to weaken or discredit their
potentially most effective adversary. What we need is a _robust_ government
willing to stand up to the oligarchs, not kowtow to them.

~~~
dnautics
No, the Soviet system led to feudalism for a predictable reason, that in fact
_was_ predicted in stunning detail before it even existed.

[http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm](http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm)

Even if you claim that the outcomes are the same, you cannot claim that the
paths are identical, that's just lazy argumentation that ignores the history
of philosophy.

~~~
notacoward
> Even if you claim that the outcomes are the same, you cannot claim that the
> paths are identical

I didn't claim the _paths_ are identical, and don't believe they are. I said
the _reasons_ are much the same. They both deny human nature. One relies on a
level of altruism that doesn't exist. The other relies on a level of "rational
self interest" that doesn't exist. Both rely on a level of honesty that
doesn't exist. Similar reasons, less similar paths, almost identical outcomes.

> that's just lazy argumentation

No, lazy argumentation is presenting no argument but a link to someone else
who says "Time forbids the treatment of that phase of the subject here" when
addressing the matter at hand. There is no way to that anarchist (what we
would now call libertarian) utopia but the same kind of revolution that led to
communism's notable real-world failures. Furthermore, there is no way to
_maintain_ such a system and keep it from devolving into oligarchy other than
to have a robust government to keep the four monopolies from re-forming. This
"anarchy" in practice ends up looking a lot like modern socialism.

------
b4lancesh33t
Maybe . . . It's not intellectual property that keeps internet companies at
the top of the pile, for the most part, unless we are counting trade secrets
and domain names as intellectual property (and they are in a sense, but not
the sense that requires a government to create an artificial market for them).

~~~
djrobstep
All markets are "artificial". Intellectual property is no different to other
forms of property in this regard. Both require a government to enforce the
laws that create them.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are markets and exchanges in which enforcement is strictly by force. Not
particularly _vibrant_ markets, mind, but they do exist.

There may be international or extranational markets outside any particular
jurisdiction.

A market is an exchange interface. There is a wide range of applicable
governing models.

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bbojan
Pretty much the premise of Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First
Century"...

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davesque
I think this phenomenon is visible in the reaction that large corporations
have to disruptive technologies or ideas. Take the music industry's reaction
to efficient audio compression formats like MP3: to pretend they didn't exist
and/or sue people who used them. There also seems to be a whiff of this in the
telecom industry's aggressive pursuit of anti-net-neutrality legislation. In
both cases, there are large industries or entities (with lots of inertia) that
have enjoyed a long stretch of dominance and profitability. Then, they're
challenged by an idea or technology. However, they'd prefer to simply keep
making money in the same way they always have. Therefore, their reaction is
not to adapt their business model, but to try to kill the technology or idea.

------
shmerl
No wonder it's so hard to roll back all the copyright garbage that accumulated
in the various laws.

