Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups





















« Mid-Morning Art Thread | Main | David French Makes the Conservative Case for Transgender Conversion of Children »
October 05, 2022

Wednesday Morning Rant [Joe Mannix]

mannixape2.jpg

The Cartel Economy

The concept of a cartel is simple: various players in an industry work together to control the market. Traditionally, the purpose of this is to maximize profits and the mechanisms can vary. It always involves collusion or conspiracy among the players involved, but sometimes it is to control price (squeeze customers), sometimes to restrict entry into the market by new players and thus protect their market shares (guilds), and there are other less-common purposes (historically, anyway) like political action.

Cartels are illegal for various reasons, for most of the same reasons that monopolies are illegal. Cartels are anti-competitive, harm consumers, reduce innovation, raise prices and - increasingly - dictate ideological compliance. Cartels are sclerotic and destructive. Despite being illegal, cartels are now commonplace and dominate critical industries with downstream effects on everything else. Cartels are now not only tolerated, cartelism has become prevailing corporate model in parts of the economy. There are perhaps no greater examples of this than Big Tech and Big Finance, two thoroughly cartelized areas.


Big Tech is particularly egregious and public with what they do. Many of these firms hold direct monopolies in their respective segments: Alphabet holds monopolies in search, advertising, long-form video; Meta holds monopolies in traditional social networking and image sharing; Twitter holds a monopoly in microblogging; Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet together dominate cloud services, PayPal and Stripe control payments, etc. Where they don't hold monopolies, they openly collude in an obvious cartel. When they want to cancel someone, they coordinate. An unperson will be booted from (or suppressed on) all of the platforms in coordinated action. Competitors will be crushed if they intersect with any cartel member's properties (Parler, anyone?). This is done for competitive reasons (eliminate challengers from the market), for ideological reasons (eliminate deplorables from the public square), for personal enrichment (OnlyFans/Meta, alleged) (I closed comments, but don't comment on old threads). All of this is not only dishonorable, bad and other ways of saying "wrong," it's illegal. Not that law matters. Hell, the "law" protects them at every turn.

Ditto Big Finance. The despicable and dangerous concept called "ESG" is a product of cartelization. The cartel didn't invent the concept, but the cartel is the driver and enforcement mechanism. Big outfits like Blackrock and Goldman Sachs all subscribe to - and enforce - ESG concepts. All of the bigs and countless little outfits actively work together to enforce ESG standards by any means necessary. They get together and put up a united front to withhold financing and financial services from businesses and from governments if they don't comply with the ESG requirement of the moment. Be it "decarbonization" or "racial equity" or whatever else they have decided is of primary importance, they will openly collude to force changes on their customers. If the customer doesn't comply, there is no money (and no services) for the customer. Some governments have been able to push back, but smaller players have not (same reminder: don't comment on old threads).

This is all flatly illegal. The laws aren't even recent, they're more than a century old. None of these behaviors in Big Tech or Big Finance (and others, like Big Medical and Big Entertainment) are acceptable and the firms should all be broken up and its principals punished. This is why we have an FTC. But the goals of the cartels and the goals of the state align nicely, so the cartels grow and cartelization grows with it. How long will it be until every industry is run by a cartel? We're getting there.

This is a political problem. And, as is the norm, there is no political will to tackle it. There isn't even any desire.

digg this
posted by Open Blogger at 11:00 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
San Franpsycho: "Today we took the ferry from Rose Bay to Circular ..."

Ciampino - she's a rainbow: "[u]QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE TO SPACE ACTIVITY FOR OCT ..."

Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere [/i] [/b]: "The weekend: Going to get my ears lowered. Groce ..."

Miklos remembers Katrina, now Helene: "Plans for the weekend? Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius ..."

Mik,os perfessional Rassler: "Personally, I'd watch a reality show where fat mid ..."

Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere [/i] [/b]: "Morning, insomaniacals! So the strike is over, fo ..."

Skip : "I have to get moving ..."

Mister Ghost: "Any more math stuff and First Gentleman Doug Emhof ..."

Mister Ghost: "Roger Stone @RogerJStoneJr Source is telling me ..."

Yudhishthira's Dice: "Personally, I'd watch a reality show where fat mi ..."

San Franpsycho: "Good morning morons Safe travels Bif ..."

Stateless: "440 The Meat Canners" would be a good band na ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64