#consumerwelfare — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #consumerwelfare, aggregated by home.social.
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“ #ConsumerWelfare, #RevealedPreferences, #regulatorycapture & #meritocracy are just some of the ways that #capitalism's alleged defenders cooked up to insist that they love the competitive discipline imposed by markets while being totally dependent on self-described #capitalists who have utterly escaped from that discipline and have committed to doing everything in their power to prevent themselves from ever coming under any form of constraint.
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Today, these [ #billionaires ] clutch their pearls at the "demonization" of the ultra-rich, calling it "billionaire derangement syndrome." But the only "billionaire derangement syndrome" that matters is the syndrome that affects billionaires and convinces them that they are above any discipline or rules.” -
Can we not return to the good ol' days when developers were pumping out actual quality software and not simply listening to their shareholders or being complicit in the surveillance state's program that treats us like guinea pigs?
#consumerWelfare #dataPrivacy #digitalSurveillance #proprietary #software
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"#ConsumerWelfare supposed that we could somehow separate our identities as "workers" from our identities as "shoppers" – that our stagnating wages and worsening conditions ceased mattering to us when we clocked out at 5PM (or, you know, 9PM) and bought a $0.99 Meal Deal at McDonald's whose low, low price was only possible because it was cooked by someone sleeping in their car and collecting food-stamps."
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter -
There's a cheat-code in US #antitrustm it's been increasingly used since the #Reagan administration, when the "#ConsumerWelfare" theory ("#monopolies are fine, so long as the lower prices") shoved aside the long-established idea that antitrust law existed to prevent monopolies from forming *at all*.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
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CW: Long thread/3
Hey look at this
* #Accelerationism is Terrorism https://crookedtimber.org/2023/10/17/accelerationism-is-terrorism/
* Trust & Safety Tycoon: Try Your Hand At Managing A Social Media #TrustAndSafety Team https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/17/trust-safety-tycoon-try-your-hand-at-managing-a-social-media-trust-safety-team/
* The Faith of #ConsumerWelfare and #Antitrust Heretics https://www.thesling.org/the-faith-of-consumer-welfare-and-antitrust-heretics/
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CW: Long thread/8
Only when offenses against our "#ConsumerWelfare" occurred should the state should step in to protect its people.
This may sound good, but in practice, it's a dead letter. The consumer welfare test isn't "If prices go up after a merger, punish the company." Instead, the government must prove the price raises came from "market power," and not from an increase in energy or labor costs, or some other "exogenous factor," like Mercury being in retrograde:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as
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The Effective Competitive Constraint Standard:
The European #Competition Council (ECC) has proposed a new standard for assessing anticompetitive behavior that incorporates modern microeconomic theory and takes a broader view of #ConsumerWelfare. The ECC standard considers #collusion, systemic exclusionary effects, and significant curtailment of rivals' opportunities to compete as #anticompetitive conduct.
https://www.promarket.org/2023/04/12/the-effective-competitive-constraint-standard/
#regulation #IndustrialOrganization -
CW: Long thread/8
Economism also insists that *power* has no place in predictions about how policies will play out. This is how the #ChicagoSchool economists were able to praise #monopolies as "efficient" systems for maximizing "#ConsumerWelfare" by lowering prices without "wasteful competition."
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CW: Long thread/4
The collapse of competition in the US airline industry is the result of a deliberate policy, the "#ConsumerWelfare" theory of #antitrust, which says that #monopolies are "efficient" and good for the public. It's a theory that took root under #Reagan, and was reaffirmed and expanded by every president, R or D, since.
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CW: Long thread/8
Bork codified this ideology in a 1978 book called "The Antitrust Paradox," arguing that monopolies are engines of efficiency.
You can tell they're efficient because they're able to take over their markets. Attacking monopolies is counterproductive - why should we punish companies for success? This is the heart of the #ConsumerWelfare theory, but it's underpinned by a much weirder and risible idea: not only is this how the law *should* be written, it's how the law *is* written.
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CW: Long thread/4
40 years of #neoliberal #ConsumerWelfare #antitrust - starting with Reagan and continuing through every administration since - has seen the American rail sector achieve levels of concentration that meet and exceed the corrupt, untenable degree of the late 19th century.
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