We need to talk about the real reason behind US inflation | Hacker News Reader

We need to talk about the real reason behind US inflation

theguardian.com

9 pointsz3t1116 comments

I don't often agree with articles from The Guardian, but this take is spot on, and it's rare that you see this opinion since 99% of news is literally owned by megacorps.

Having these massive corporations control entire sectors of the economy is turning out horribly. It's suffering from the same issues as centrally planned economies. I mean look at megacorp products nowadays - they are all so bland, so soulless, always getting more expensive, always shoveling blatant far-left crap into your face. I'm talking about Marvel movies, Star Wars, Netflix originals, Youtube removing the dislike button, Coca Cola going woke, etc. If the free market was working, then I would absolutely move to alternative products, but instead we are just stuck accepting the decrees of what have basically become authoritarian mini-governments.

I don't know if antitrust is the answer to this. It's messed up to say so, but I think a major recession and/or depression might be required to wash away all the ideological rot and laziness that has seeped into US big business in the past 13 years.

In germany there is a saying "Wo ein Trog ist kommen die Schweine." which roughly translates to "Where there is a trough the pigs will come."

At the moment we see an epidemic of former german companies with great tradition getting bought up and their products lowered to the lowest acceptable quality with the prizing staying the same. The worst part about this all is that identifying a quality product is nearly impossible now. Even if they score good test results the component quality usually gets lowered after half a year it's insanity.

There just is no middle ground anymore I can buy from big corps and mostly know the product and service is either great or at least ok or go to small shops that are really expensive.

Driving up inflation (which likely triggers a recession) doesn't seem in the best interest of the companies listed. It certainly could be short sighted greed driving things, it wouldn't be the first time. But maybe the US government spending 3T in the last 2 years had more of an impact on the current inflation?

This feels like the essence of Late-stage capitalism to me. There are a relatively small number of corporate colossuses & they no longer compete to serve the market, they compete to maintain territory that they exploit.

By definition that isn’t capitalism, that’s closer to what Smith called “mercantilism” in Wealth of Nations. Not intending to throw shade at you here, I just get upset when people blame capitalism for what amounts to a perversion thereof, in fact.

i'd expect this to happen anytime private controls over trade & industry is allowed to iterate long enough.

mercantilism that i know from history is pre-globalized & much smaller scale. the wealth of natuons view is of wealth as fixed & limited, & pertains to control/hording of wealth, at a national scale.

but this is control over supernational wealth creation, corporate reign over production & distribution & channels. nothing could sound more lime unchecked private owneracy to me. im definitely open to hearing more byt strong disagreement from me so far.

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