• Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I don’t think there should be price caps, but, I think we could get somewhere having a maximum amount you’re allowed to raise your prices by in a single year and how long you have to take to get there.

    I think this rate should be tied to federal interest rates to create a competing class interest to the owner class wanting interest rates to stay low forever even if it breaks the bank for everyone else.

    • Bob@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      I mean, just break up the massive corporations. Capitalism requires seller competition in the marketplace in order to provide an incentive to drive down prices. If there are too few players, they can easily make unspoken agreements to fuck over consumers.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        The problem is we have historical evidence to show that that doesn’t exactly work. Standard Oil’s broken up parts have mostly been able to informally collude with one another on “turf” and in some cases even defy having been broken up to reacquire each other.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          So in the 113 years since they broke up Standard Oil, some of the beneficial effects have worn off?

          Darn only a century of benefit. Guess it was a failure because the benefits weren’t eternal.

          • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            When exactly did the commenter above you claim that it’s a recent phenomenon? It’s not.

            And it becomes increasingly hard to legislate against companies who hold such immense economic power, to the point of being able to buy your private media and ruin your campaign for elections if you threaten them

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      but, I think we could get somewhere having a maximum amount you’re allowed to raise your prices by in a single year and how long you have to take to get there

      We already have this. It’s called a free market and when you raise prices too high your competition takes all your business. It’s beautiful and everybody hates it due to multiple decades of anti-free-market propaganda.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          I like how he keeps commenting the same nonsense and people are just ignoring it. Like obviously the “free market” prices for lots of goods were wrong. That’s why people are pissed and companies are being forced to lower them.

          Supply and demand do balance out… in the long run. The problem with that is (and what Libertarians never understand) in the long run we are all dead.

          • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Libertarians are all fucking morons. They think humanity will react with good intentions only. It’s a mental disorder.

      • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        when you raise prices too high your competition takes all your business

        The theory works beautifully… For the first 30 years of capitalism. After a few decades, the more profitable and most competitive companies grow so much through consolidation of the market, that due to sheer economy of scale it becomes impossible to compete with them if you’re not an equally well-established company in the same sector. Oligopolies and monopolies form, and it gets to a point where you can’t outcompete them because the capital investment to be competitive would be so bonkers, and the presence of the two companies creating the same product at such humongous scales would saturate the market so much, that it makes absolutely no sense to try and outcompete them. And even if competition started to really appear, the bigger company buys it and competition is undone again.

        You guys live in a parallel world, your axioms of “free market” simply don’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny.