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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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Thing is…there is no real free market with proper competition, anyway. If there was such a thing, my groceries wouldn’t cost double now from what they were a mere five years ago (or quadruple, if looking at soda like Coke and Pepsi products). There is rampant collusion and price-fixing going on and not a damn government official seems to be doing anything about it. And yeah, the “but but the pandemic” excuse runs pretty thin as the years of this gouging continues.
The truth is, a real market is never actually truly competitive. In an unregulated market, competing firms always collude with each other to set prices and wages for the industry. "Free market" ideology is based on nonsense, they've proven this over and over.
In a free market, aren't you free to collude with your competitors in order to fix prices?
In a Hayekian free market, yes. Most (all?) actual free markets prohibit cartels, though.
There's no such thing. All markets are regulated. Even ones dominated by cartels. Markets do not meaningfully exist without regulation. The only question is how they're regulated.
The theoretical model of the free market relies on perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information. If those are given, then resource allocation indeed is perfect.
Those conditions of course don't exist in the real world, best we can do is to regulate away market failures to approach the theoretical ideal. That's the kind of thing ordoliberalism argues for, and it can indeed work very well in practice. Random example: You want companies to use packaging with less environmental impact. You could have a packaging ministry that decides which company uses what packaging for what, creating tons of state bureaucracy -- or you could say "producers, you're now paying for the disposal of packaging yourself". What previously was an externality for those companies suddenly appears on their balance sheet and they self-regulate to use way more cardboard, easily recyclable plastics, whatnot.
Definitely wouldn't solve the problem as they'd just find the cheapest method of disposal to match the letter of the law and go about their day.
Corporations don't self-regulate. They regulate the regulators. They work and then later buy the refs.
Those are illegal. Already were before. I'm not talking about a hypothetical, here, the policy is over 30 years old.
Yeah if they do that were you are then maybe elect better politicians. They sure as hell try it over here but it's not nearly as much as an issue as e.g. in the US.
I dunno if I were in Germany I wouldn't be so smug about electing politicians that prevent a slide into fascism.
Are you actually trying to make a point or did you simply want to be hostile.
My point is that it's not as simple as setting "common sense" neoliberal rules when the corporations actively evade them. The problem in the US is also more complicated than you're making it, here we need to basically redo a court which is full of people on lifetime appointments in order to roll back their ruling that political corruption is basically free speech.
The stuff I described was not a neoliberal rule at all, they abhor any kind of regulation that's not securing property rights for the affluent.
This "regulate away market failures to approach the ideal of the free market better" thing is ordoliberalism. An actual economic theory I don't fully agree with but which is mostly sane, and is, most of all, unlike neoliberalism not pure class war. Ordoliberalism e.g. considers welfare necessary so that the labour market isn't stacked in favour of the employers.
Don't agree with your definition of "neoliberal" really at all, and especially not within the context of American politics. It's too narrow and wouldn't fit most any politician.
Do we really have to have yet another esoteric term for what is largely the same school of thought?
I am not really sure what point you are trying to make other than arguing definitions. Much of or even most of prominent American politicians in the last half century or so could be classified as neoliberals. They favor "market"-based solutions to everything and "public-private" partnerships. Many of those still consider welfare necessary as well so they'd be "ordoliberals" in your book.
Actually, maybe not because that just sounds like German for neoliberal.
The concept of regulatory capture is the fundamental illustrating concept in modern US politics. Industry groups and the wealthy sit on our politicians until they get exactly what they want. Traditional and increasingly even social media serve as the persuasion arm for the wealthy, industrial class. Simple rules added in good faith and followed by industry groups via "self-regulation" simply do not work here. Even if you pass the rule and then later try to enforce it, enforcement is made toothless by our Supreme Court.
There are a few places in the country where politicians can hit back at industry groups with some degree of success, but even in our most "ordoliberal" or "liberal liberal" or "neoliberal" or "choco-moco-latta-yaya-liberal" states, industry mostly wins.
And we're just ahead of the curve in the slow slide toward fascism. Exactly as the Nobel laureate here is saying, neoliberalism is just another mechanism used to hollow out the government from within and make it ineffective until it serves mostly no one, and then that disenchantment with material conditions over time leads to right-wing populism (a.k.a. fascism).
The Marxists have been saying this all along, and I am not a Marxist though I agree with a lot of Marx's analysis on capitalism and industry. I think there is an alternative, and I think mid-century American politics illustrated it...strong unions, a welfare state, tax policy that levels out wealth inequality, and a government capable of regulating industry.
All those are absolutely things in line with, required by, ordoliberalism. They are very much not in line with neoliberalism. Maybe you should've actually read the theory section of that wikipedia article you linked because it talks about unions, of welfare, progressive taxation, and definitely regulations.
Speaking of Marx: He is, via Weber, a definite influence on ordoliberalism. The Freiburg school (whence ordoliberalism) is to economics what the Frankfurt school (whence critical theory) is to sociology.
I said it before and I'll say it again: The American mind can't comprehend European social liberals.
That may very well be. But you're talking about the US, specifically. Complaining about regulation not working in the US is like complaining that rule of law is a non-starter in Somalia: The issue is not the idea of the rule of law, but Somalia being Somalia.
Oh so smug, and yet still "European social liberals" are constantly on the brink of having their own outbreak of fascism.
I think that one of the few reasons the Nazi party hasn't re-emerged in Germany is that it's strictly forbidden by law.
Oh yes, it's simply because the US is the US, and has nothing to do with the fact that we've had neoliberal politicians for approximately 50 years. All of that stuff I mentioned at the end of my last post was describing mid 20th century US politics.
Also, comments like "rule of law doesn't work in Somalia because it's Somalia" show me you have exactly nothing to add to any conversation about geopolitics and borders on racism.
Our implementation isn't flawless, either. Things generally started to go downhill in the 90s when the direct ideological competitor in the form of the soviet block vanished. The rise of New Labour, a flurry of completely mismanaged privatisations, etc. The system overall is annoyingly sluggish but there very much is consciousness that that fascist stuff and that we now have a precariat are connected. Acting on that consciousness is harder.
In any case that's not a fault of the theory itself: Things fall apart pretty precisely in those spots where it's being ignored.
I'm sorry yes you having that kind of politics in the past is exactly why the US is how the US is. Like, time and determinism exist. Longer than that, actually: While things went downhill in the US approximately with Nixon, you on top of that started that slide from a lower starting point. Random example: You never had a right to housing. Not just "well if Democrats are in power we might be lucky and get a social housing project" but "Can't make rent? Can't find an apartment? Push come to shove the state will have to pay for a hotel room and if they don't courts will hold the mayor in contempt". Those kinds of difference goes all the way back to rugged individualism and whatnot. Or, less detailed but not less accurate: Because the US is the US.
The fuck would race have to do with anything you really are American. Xeer does not have enforcement mechanisms that could deal with the current political and security situation, that's all that I'm saying. Somalian judges can make the justest judgements the earth has ever seen, ultimately Mao is still right about gun barrels.
"I heard a phrase once about Americans, so that must be why they're sliding towards fascism. It definitely can't be for the same reasons people have pointed to for a hundred years."
Right, right, it's not that Somalia is Somalia, it's something in their "culture"? Right?
What are the reasons those pointed-at reasons persist? Why does is that persistence more pronounced is some places, but not others? Can there be a symptom without underlying causes?
How come e.g. the death penalty is still accepted as a topic of polite conversation in America? I maybe shouldn't have led with rugged individualism, e.g. Australians have a similar streak in that regard, the real core of the issue is that the Enlightenment never truly arrived in the US. Jingoism, understood as the general notion of "we're already the best it's impossible for us to get better by learning from others" also plays a large role, I guess it's half your isolationist streak, and half strategy by the powers that be to avoid questioning of the status quo. There's definitely policy in place to reinforce it through the education system -- from limited and navel-gazing curriculum to the pledge of allegiance which btw is fascist AF.
I specifically mentioned Xeer, no need on your part to speculate, or pretend I wasn't being clear.
Read theory if you're actually curious and not just posting to post. Personally, I've come to think of inequality as being at the center of it all.
But the reason is certainly not "because <> is <>".
Inequality doesn't just turn up out of nowhere.
I never claimed "because country is country" is a deep and meaningful analysis of the material factors in a given country and its history. What it is, and what I expect people with a modicum of knowledge of the English language to understand it as, is vaguely gesturing at the overall situation and saying "this thing here that be the way it do". You know, pizza is tasty because it's pizza does one always have to be more specific than that.
Why would anyone post this? Of course it didn't just turn up out of nowhere.
That quoted phrase you have there is pure hot nonsense.
Good. Then you agree that it's valuable to look at the reasons for inequality, I presume, and not stop at "inequality is the centre of it all". Both material and immaterial ones. Or to put in classic Marxist terms (a bit reductive but it's close enough): What's the economic and cultural obstacles to class consciousness.
It's using habitual/continuative aspect. "This thing here that is habitually that way because it habitually is that way".
I know you think you're the smartest person on Earth giving unthinking Americans lessons or something but you haven't taught me a damned thing here at all except what the German word for neoliberal is.
(But, I know, don't dare call them that!!! 😡🤬 😤)
😆
Separately, even frequent users of the habitual be wouldn't write a sentence like that.
That's not even remotely true. Natural monopolies exist because of how natural resources work, and oligopolies or undercutting of prices to destroy weak competition can happen with perfect knowledge by sellers and buyers.
It can't happen given perfect rationality as it's not in the rational interest of the majority to allow a minority their monopolies.
It's a fucking theoretical model. The maths check out, that's not the issue the issue is that it's theory, with very glaring limitations.
Funnily enough, not even neoliberals believe in the free market regardless of how much they spout its nonsense.
Thatcher was one of such neoliberals, she would always talk about how people should become self-sufficient and governments shouldn't interfere in the free market for it to truly work and so on, but during her rule she was spending billions in subsidies for corporations (aka government interference in the free market). Of course, they weren't called subsidies in the paperwork but some other bullshit like "public investment", but their effect was still the same.
In the USA, the FTC is actually taking grocery store chains to court over collusion and price fixing, presumably will target specific brands once more data gets released via the court proceedings.
So there are government officials doing things about it, but nobody ever seems to give them any fucking credit and every few years we vote in new politicians who gut the agency.
This is news to me! You got a link to a credible source? I’d love to read it so I can hopefully change my opinion some.
EDIT>> Found it on my own, and it's the FTC, not the FCC. ~~And this was posted one day ago, so I would think I could be forgiven for that :)~~ (Seems it's been in the works since March, at least) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/grocery-cost-inflation-investigation-b2594782.html
Investigation report form March LINK
April actions LINK
2 days ago LINK
Also they sued to stop the Albertsons Kroger Merger LINK
Everything else I said was pure assertion on my part, but the point still stands
Thanks! That's definitely more than I found. I didn't know it goes back to March. Much appreciated.
Well you can find various FCC lawsuits going back decades but nobody ever talks about any of that stuff.
I think you mean FTC, but I'll research to learn more. Thanks!
FTC oversees securities exchanges, primarily. Things like the stock market.
You’re mistaken. That’s the SEC. FTC is commerce and trade.
Ah youre right, FCC just regulates telecommunications lol my bad must have been a little foggy.
No worries! Happens to me all the time in real life.
I appreciate the information you provided. Helps me learn some things I didn’t know and get my facts straight.
The best bureaucrat we have is Lina Khan and all the wealthy donors on both sides want her gone.
Is the pandemic really the main claimed reason in the US? Here in central Europe it seems that since February of 2022, all products have been coming exclusively from Ukraine, so that is why they just had to become more expensive you know...
That joke was good, but it's old now. Everyone should understand that it was due to the peak of oil/gas prices due to the Ukraine war, that had cascade effects on the price of transportation, fertilizer, energy, groceries...which then compounded into general inflation with some price gouging too to keep it from going back as quickly.
If you want to keep that from happening again, gradually reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for your security, not just to "be green".
Many businesses in the US still cling to that trope, yes. We all understood that it was to a be a temporary issue in 2020 and 2021, but businesses took that to mean they could just never drop their prices now that people were willing, at the time, to pay for it. I'm not talking luxury goods either, I'm talking about staples to maintain life, such as meat, vegetables, and even water prices have risen. This is untenable for many, many people.