How do corporations become so powerful?
- Thread starter lifegoesonbrah
- Start date
Dislexicmidget2021
Well-Known Member
its sad but true,Money=power in this world,no way around it.
canndo
Well-Known Member
go back to the era of the robber barrons, go back to the carnagies and the melons and the other moguls when there was no government interference and you will see trusts and monopolies galore.
The free market is not the best arbiter of winners and losers because the winners can stack the deck when they get big enough. They can price fix, dump, intimidate or buy out their competition. the only thing bigger than the biggest company is government, and especially the U.S. government, a weak government cannot control, contain or force a company to refrain from abuse.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Although I cannot argue with the principle here Beenthere, it has been my experience that small business is most often hindered not by Federal law but by state law and local ordinance.
deprave
New Member
You don't have to go back and look at the winners view of history, simply look at HK today. No your wrong, this is not the problem with Free Market, Problem is the implementation, its is hard to have a viable path toward a free market that would sustain itself as truly free, thats the problem if anything this is the debate. Buy out their competition, price fix, intimidate...these things are irrelevant in a truly free market they are far to costly and the cost is endless, only for a short time can someone sustain a cornering of the market at a cost far greater than the reward, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be honest. With government involved and money in politics its easy and highly profitable to control the market, it makes complete sense only then.
canndo
Well-Known Member
I own an oil company, all of my friends own oil companies. We hear that some upstart somewhere has invented a way to make an oil subsitute in his back yard. I and my friends vary the price of oil to just below the margin of profitbility for that back yard guy - to keep our customers relatively happy and get investors to back the back yard guy. Then we raise the price and wait a bit, until the backyard guy can't compete, then we lower it. Back yard guy is awesomer than we are, but we control the price of the only game in town and he will never get in.
I own the biggest software house in the world. Another company makes some software that I think will shave my profit. I intimidate the company, I embed a similar bit of software in my operating system in effect giving that software away for free. then I buy that other company when their stocks fall.
A "real monopoly" is very possible in an unfettered free market. It is true that eventually monopolies will collapse for a variety of reasons, usually as demand is drained by ofsetting technologies or the monopolistic company finaly gets sclorotic and inflexable but it could take several generations or even several lifetimes for that to happen.
Most people are unwilling to live under the tyranny of a monopoly for their entire lives. I think it is sad how so many actually believe that the only source of tyranny is government when they are tyrannized every day by one company or another.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Mind you, I cannot reasonably claim that colusion between government and corporations does not contribute to the problem of great corporate power. When an industry tilts the legislative table toward themselves it is the result of short sighted or greedy legislators and a free flow of cash. Now, it also helps that corporations have their hand on the PR controls in order to get the citizens on board.
But. Monopolies can be pretty easy to erect for corporations with the ability in a marketplace unrestricted by government regulations. Any company with long sights will spend that money in order to eradicate or absorb competition because they know the ultimate rewards are far greater than their temporary costs. We see this over and over in the marketplace even now. We see monolithic multinationals with the power and willingness to marry other like minded companies and squash any upstarts that may get in the way. The browser wars of the 80's is case in point.
deprave
New Member
Backyard guy is clearly not awesomer than you are and niether is your competing software company. On the Allan Awe's Awesomest Awesome Scale the guy is a B average at best. Backyard guy and competing software company have a problem, they can not appease the consumer this is healthy, If they cannot appease the consumer that is their problem, you have been forced to lower your prices and/or provide better service all around to satisy consumer demand. Perhaps backyard guy could improve his skills, perhaps he can offer a new inovative service that you cannot, perhaps he has better customer service skills because he doesn't hire broken english foriengers at remote call center sweat shops, either way, BackYard guy must contribute to society, they must make the consumer demand, they must work for the better of the people or Allan Awe' continues to rate them low and they are Not Awesomeser.
Today....If we don't like Wal-mart, or taco bell, or home depot....We can call and talk to a person from india, our complaint is thrown in a file somewhere...the diservice to society continues cause they don't give a fuck about us....Get iT?
Rob Roy
Well-Known Member
The biggest "monopoly" in the world is the United States government. They have monopolized currency, use of force, war on drugs and using "freedom" to advance empire.
canndo
Well-Known Member
No no, Backyard guy needs investment money. Backyard guy has to show a profit somewhere somehow and he cannot when all of his competition can turn his profit on and off at the flip of switch. Commodities have no need for technical support or better customer service, all they have to do is have a supply chain and a price that is lower than the competition. What you are talking about is any battle between two established companies in competition. In that case, one can take market share from another by any of a number of methods. But we are talking about monopolies - there is no "burger monopoly", there can be a number 2. Not so when we are talking about specific services or commodities.
There are arguments over the effectiveness of the break up of Ma Bell, but the reality of the situation was that a competing communication company at the time could not break through with their own infrastructure using the then current technology. What would have had to have happened is something innovative but even that would have required the participation of the monopolistic company. I got this idea for wireless telephony, I can put up towers and everyone can talk to everyone else - but the folk who now have wired phones need to be talked to as well and the only way I can do that is to tap into the wired phone system.
These sorts of technologies cannot be jump started on their own, they have to prop themselves up on older technology and that is where the monopolies have their advantage.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Monoploized currency? hardly, we have alternative currencies, we have barter, we could use other country's currencies as well. There is no monopoly on the "use of force", especially if we use your rather broad definition of force. I don't see anything monopolistic about a "war" on drugs. Yes, we use the notion of "freedom" i.e. freedom of choice to advance our empire, but for the most part the true nature of our empire hinges on our culture and not necessarily on our government.
deprave
New Member
Are you joking? is this a sarcastic post?
deprave
New Member
You completely overlooked my point, so much so that I feel you didn't even retain my post even if you did read it or skim over it. SO THE PLAN IS TO "TURN PROFIT OFF" WITH "THE FLIP OF THE SWITCH" TO STOMP OUT COMPETITION! GOOD FUCKING PLAN! HOW LONG IS THAT GOING TO LAST? HOW LONG BEFORE YOU COMPLETELY GO UNDER? (sorry for the caps but I feel its nessecary on that point, btw that was sarcastic)
for the part I highlighted in red, its simply not a factual statement, even if it was a fact, its irrelevant. If your invention is so good, you would no doubt be able to sell it for a profit.
canndo
Well-Known Member
Deprave, your posts are interesting to me and I enjoy our conversations. If it seems sometimes that I skim, sometimes I do, but before I posted my response I went back and read it again. I must not have explained myself well enough.
Your point is that a truely awesome approach to a demand will always be so innovative that it can stand on its own and can instantly become competition to that previously monopolistic corporation. your other point is that no company can afford to injure their profits long enough to destroy another company's ability to make a profit or even survive.
Back to our back yard oil guy. That guy finds that he has to charge $4.86 a gallon in order to turn a profit. He has to turn a profit in order to encourage investors and assure them that their money is safe in his hands.
The big oil companies, because their infrastructure is already in place, can turn a profit at $3.86. In short, they can charge $3.86 for a very long time.
Even if they have to lose a few cents a gallon in the process, the start up cannot afford to wait it out because he has a different set of requirements. The monopolistic company does not have the start up costs that the back yard guy has.
Now the reason I used this back yard guy was because I was a back yard guy. I am not going to sit here and try to have you believe that any oil companies got into a war with me, considering my output was about 1200 gallons per week they were never threatened in the least. But the dynamics were the same. Fluctuations in the price of diesel could have wiped me out in a few months - this is how I began to understand why alternative energies have such a tough time without government intervention. I showed a net profit of about sixty cents a gallon. When I added government assitance of 50 cents a gallon and my profit from the unofficial carbon exchange and finally a small payment for the removal of used oil per site I did quite well. But only if I could keep the price of my fuel below that of the big companies. I could claim all day long that my fuel was better for their equipment, I could demonstrate that the use of my fuel was better for the environment but the hard line was that I could sell my product only if the price was lower than all of my competition.
As it turned out, had I stayed in the business I would have had to endure many months of low prices for conventional fuel, something that I could not have done.
I finally failed because of local zoning ordinances, but had I suceeded in being the next great thing in supplying bio to heavy equipment rental yards I am sure any company could have crushed me while enduring only a small and temporary setback in their profits.
What did you say??? LOL
bedspirit
Active Member
I think their rise to power had to do with reducing government interference. Our founders actually had very strict regulations regarding corporations. They were only allowed to operate in a defined area, they were only granted charters for a limited amount of time (usually around 20 years), and they were only allowed to provide one type of service. No branching out into other areas or owning any other types of corporations. It took a lot of bribes to get judges and legislators to loosen those rules. This is how the robber barons became so big in the first place.
A lot of free marketeers today pay a lot of lip service to our constitution and the founding fathers, but what they don't realize is that our founding fathers were far more hostile to the corporate structure than Barack Obama and the democrats could ever be.
Dr Kynes
Well-Known Member
add in immortality, special tax regimens, indemnity from their own wrongdoing, and a legally mandated requirement to make profit at all costs and you have the recipe for the modern corporate structure. the corporate system has been redesigned from the ground up to create an unstoppable profit making machine with no accountability to anyone, even their shareholders as long as the bottom line is written in black ink.
the only sin a corporation or it's board can indulge is failure to profit. anything else is just a cost of doing business.
if a board of directors decides it's cheaper to pay the fines for dumping toxic waste in a river than to dispose of it properly then the river gets boned. until the board of directors can be jailed for the criminal acts they cause we will always face corporations who can do as they please. it's almost impossible to collect the fines from a corporate entity, as their immortality ensures that appeals and motions can go on forever, this is why the EPA focuses on little fish like amish farms and small businesses. its so much easier.
And this is the precise reason big corporations lobby the federal government for stronger regulations to squeeze out small businesses!
Last year the EPA levied fines of $6.8million on all oil companies for not blending cellulosic ethanol with gasoline, the catch is, the oil companies could not blend it, there was absolutely zero cellulosic ethanol produced.
So what does the EPA do after fining the oil companies and knowing there was no cellulosic ethanol, they up the quota by 2million gallons!
Refiners had to blend 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in 2011. Although precisely zero gallons of cellulosic ethanol were produced, the Environmental Protection Agency increased the quota to 8.65 million gallons. The idea was to create a domestic cellulosic ethanol industry, yet according to EPA data, no such fuel has been produced last year or this year. http://www.indecisionforever.com/blog/2012/07/18/epa-fines-companies-for-failure-to-deploy-unicorn-farts
canndo
Well-Known Member
Yet corporations are people don'tchaknow.