Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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I support price regulation when called for. Your hyperbole is...not congruent with reality, considering the incredible agriculture subsidies provided and automobile tariffs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/economists...

https://www.ncsl.org/financial-services/price-gouging-state-...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

From a paid Matt Stoller BIG (https://thebignewsletter.com/) piece on monopoly pricing:

> Something real is going on. In individual markets, CEOs have been bragging publicly that they are restraining production to increase prices. Profit margins in the food industry jumped during Covid and haven’t come back down. Or take rent. There’s a company called RealPage that works with the biggest corporate landlords to hold apartments empty so they can increase prices, which jumped up 11% in 2022. There’s some evidence of conspiracy around pricing in virtually every industry. Turkey, poultry, and pork. Frozen french fries. PVC pipe. Anesthesiology. Oil. Ammunition. Pharmaceuticals. K-Pop. Credit bureaus and FICO, Verisign, industrial gasses, architectural software, locks, entertainment data. Homebuilders. Garden chemicals. Defense and aerospace. Ticketing. Estate Sales. Gaming. Drug wholesaling. Work ID information. Seeds and chemicals.

Laws to crack down on this behavior has popular support, so I won't spend additional time defending the idea in this forum, as it is unnecessary.

https://blueprint2024.com/polling/inflation-poll-06-25/

https://blueprint2024.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screens...

> The most popular policies are calling on all states to suspend taxes on groceries (68% selected), cracking down on overcharging by hospitals (66%), starting a congressional committee to hold hearings on and investigate price gouging and overcharging by corporations (63%), requiring public utilities to cut rates for electricity (63%), reducing the deficit by cutting spending (62%), and prosecuting price gougers (61%).

> I support price regulation when called for.

When is price regulation ever called for? The only times I can think of are when there is a monopoly, oligopoly, monopsony, oligopsony or significant externalities.

> Laws to crack down on this behavior has popular support, so I won't spend additional time defending the idea in this forum

The popularity of a proposal has very little to do with its appropriateness.

>I support price regulation when called for. Your hyperbole is...not congruent with reality, considering the incredible agriculture subsidies provided and automobile tariffs.

The outrageous profiteering in food and groceries is not with the hyper-subsidized agriculture industry that grows food and raises livestock, but up the supply chain in the middle-men who buy this to process and package it (especially meatpacking). Consumers, farmers, and grocers would all be served if the monopolies that absorb massive food profits were busted.

> Something real is going on. In individual markets, CEOs have been bragging publicly that they are restraining production to increase prices. Profit margins in the food industry jumped during Covid and haven’t come back down. Or take rent. There’s a company called RealPage that works with the biggest corporate landlords to hold apartments empty so they can increase prices, which jumped up 11% in 2022. There’s some evidence of conspiracy around pricing in virtually every industry. Turkey, poultry, and pork. Frozen french fries. PVC pipe. Anesthesiology. Oil. Ammunition. Pharmaceuticals. K-Pop. Credit bureaus and FICO, Verisign, industrial gasses, architectural software, locks, entertainment data. Homebuilders. Garden chemicals. Defense and aerospace. Ticketing. Estate Sales. Gaming. Drug wholesaling. Work ID information. Seeds and chemicals.

Sounds like the real solution to this problem is the same solution to the housing market: Too many laws preventing new entrants, which prevents natural competition from lowering prices.

The problem is the needless and protectionist laws and regulations. If you want to see the effectiveness of monopoly regulation, look at California's PG&E vs Texas' deregulated electricity provider market. Californians are paying outrageous bills, meanwhile Texans have their choice of paying different electricity providers, and thus have much lower electric rates.

>Sounds like the real solution to this problem is the same solution to the housing market: Too many laws preventing new entrants, which prevents natural competition from lowering prices.

I could buy this for many industries, but real estate has no functioning free market dynamics because there is no external pressures to facilitate maximal usage of land value (and therefore sale or productive usage like building more homes), in fact most of zoning laws do just the opposite - they encourage low yield development for the sake of holding existing land owners value higher.

A land value tax would flip this narrative, applying an actual market force to real estate market dynamics. This would incentivize maximal productive use of land to pay for the land value tax. Not to mention, land value taxes are easier to implement and assess value on. It also puts an actual value on what makes the land valuable - the community aspect, like being located near shopping centers - and returns money back into the community. Combined with upzoning, you would see more churn in the housing market and massive incentivizes to build more housing, because you would finally have a pricing pressure on the value of the land.

Changing zoning alone isn't going to make the same dent either, because it does nothing to incentivize the sale of land, same with changing any regulation around housing. You need something that facilitates land owners to actively make productive maximal use of land value, and an LVT will do that.

> The problem is the needless and protectionist laws and regulations. If you want to see the effectiveness of monopoly regulation, look at California's PG&E vs Texas' deregulated electricity provider market. Californians are paying outrageous bills, meanwhile Texans have their choice of paying different electricity providers, and thus have much lower electric rates.

They really don't:

- https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/23/texas-electricity-bi...

- https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/22/texas-pauses-electri...

... and have we already forgot that 250+ people died and 3/4 of the state was left without power during a winter storm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

Even _if_ Texans were paying less on their monthly bills, does that matter if ERCOT's negligence ends up getting people killed and causing massive power outages during times when its needed most critically?

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