Yep, a huge portion of this recent ‘inflation’ is not cost increases or actual inflation… just basically the wealthy class turning the screws on everyone else because they can.
Don’t worry, my Econ 101 class states that surely a competitor will come in and operate at a lower cost to recoup that cost for the customers!
Wait… what do you mean the competitors are all increasing prices by the same amount knowing demand for diapers is inelastic and the Nash equilibrium is for them to all match price increases so that they all make more money together?
Surely a new entrant will help!
Wait… what do you mean nobody will invest in a new competitor because the market is “saturated” and even if they did the big brands would just decrease prices in the areas they operate until they run out of cash and fold?
Surely a regulator will help!
Wait… what do you mean the regulators feel price increases are due to “too much demand” for products and are turning the screws on consumers?
I think corporations learned some very dangerous lessons from the pandemic.
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The demand for essential goods is inelastic. They can charge whatever and people still have to but things, especially food, household products, and a place to live.
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They can understaff and underpay employees, and people will choose to fault people for laziness rather than the deliberate corporate choices that lead to the situation.
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Corporations have built such a large market share so as to have created giant barriers to entry that there is zero competition from new businesses.
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Even larger competitor corporations are happy to wink and nod as you both raise prices, cut staff, and give paltry raises because it just means you both make more money, and so long as you don’t say it out loud, it isn’t collusion.
They already knew these things, they just needed an excuse to not cause too much of an uproar. Egg prices went up by way too much too quickly that even the government, who rarely actually does anything about this sort of thing, started an investigation. Magically the prices dropped by a lot, but unfortunately still higher than it used to be.
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So I propose a solution:
We start and fund a non-profit organization designed to produce basic living essentials and sell it at the cost to manufacture, regardless of market pressures. Then we all collectively buy from this non-profit and have a functional means of production legally owned and controlled by the people.
Set up strict rules to ban anyone who has ever worked in any upper management position in any for-profit basic essentials producing company from ever holding any position of power in the non-profit. No one from the corporate world at all. No one from any position in state or federal government. No lobbyists or consultants or members of their think tanks or any of their goons.
Use open source designs for the factories and everyone in the community works together to automate them as much as is possible.
Yes this is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time, I think it’s basically inevitable that it’ll happen eventually but an actual effort to make it happen faster would be such a positive thing in the world.
The reason I say it’s inevitable is because design tools are getting consistently better, hardware is cheaper than ever, and ever more useful stuff is being added to the commons. With ai assisted CAD and ai assisted manufacture we’re going to see so many amazing new open source designs getting built.
People are going to start moving away from for-profit designed homegoods like washing machines and printers because they’ll be able to get a community designed and tested product modified to their specific needs and tastes then have that fabricated at whatever local firm or tinkerer you want to give your business to.
You’ll have to make the way the non profit organisation is run or organised, also impossible to gather autocracy in.
Not just hard, impossible. No one should be able to mess with any aspects of the nonprofit, incorruptible, people-owned, affordable (NIPA) organisation.
And even if it is hard and not impossible, it should be made such that it is easier to get back to that situation, than to remove any of the NIPA aspects.
Do we know who is setting the price higher? Is it more like it’s 6% higher but so is everything else or more of the manufacturer selling to the storefronts at a higher cost thus forcing grocery stores to set the price higher by 6%?
Because it informs who we should be mad at
Corporations. Do. Not. Care.
My ex-favorite tea brands silently cutting 20% of tea bags in the box and raised the price 15%, while keeping the same sized box and make the printed weight and contents smaller and harder to find.
And people call me crazy for getting frustrated.
Shareholder primacy is upheld by the state putting every publicly owned company antagonistic to its workers and customers, id est, the public.
This means the companies are forced to charge what the market will bear, and it’s the responsibility of the government to regulate prices to keep things affordable.
But this means lobbying by companies is an attack on the public. (It’s highly profitable to bribe officials and should be illegal. It also means officials who take lobby money are traitors to the public, the nation and their office, whether or not doing so is legal.
So the justification for bullets is there, and has been for several decades. We’re just not very good at seeing when we have nothing left to lose.
I wonder what it would take to convince people to fight for what is right.
BORING
