Private banks, with their myriad functions and qualities—like being deputized by the federal government to disburse loans and engage in activities that resemble money creation—don’t exist to advance public good. They exist to rake in exorbitant profits for themselves, proving time and again they’ll do anything in their power to…
Comments closedCategory: Economics
Every facet of American life revolves around profiteering like it’s mandated by God, where giant companies exist in highly consolidated markets in attempt to swallow them whole. As if it were not enough to ruthlessly push out competitors and erect high barriers to entry for startups and small businesses, these…
Comments closedBy now we’ve had time to soak in the release of some earth-shattering information about corruption and wealth hoarding abetted by the shadow finance industry in the Pandora Papers, from the research highlighting wealth hoarding of the country’s top 1% and massive corporate profits resulting from generous taxation policy and…
Comments closedThere’s plenty of charm and a certain amount of feel-goodness in SimCity. There’s a playlist of soothing, lyric-free house music that renders the gameplay therapeutic if played at the right pace. There’s a playful and customizable mix of attention-grabbing maps, creative tools, cultural buildings, terrains, and city resources coming together…
Comments closedPresident Biden spoke yesterday responding to questions about the nation’s supposed “labor shortage.” “Pay them more,” he urged employers across the land on national television. I wonder if there are any other policy options besides trusting private industry not to exploit and squeeze their workers. Other than the ridiculousness of…
Comments closedOne problem with the way antitrust doctrine is applied today in courts, which itself is an ahistorical interpretation of the law, is the way judges apply the “principles” of economics to their legal analysis of monopoly (anticompetitive) harms, harms sustained by immense market power. The standard, popular threshold to measure…
Comments closedDespite the popular wisdom that shareholders of a firm are its true owners, there is no sense, legal or otherwise, to which this is true. This post will serve to survey some of the political science literature and the contemporary legal scholarship which I believe thoroughly debunks the shareholder value…
Comments closedThe whole of social science and legal research offers vast amounts of evidence to disabuse any notion that free markets exist anywhere in a capitalist society. Everyone from non-economists to the general public cannot escape this reality. We as individuals have no choice but to exist under capitalism because it…
Comments closedStereotypes are positive and negative. But no matter the distinction, they are always harmful to someone. Like all stereotypes, there exists several unfounded, uncritical and plainly false ideas about how a particular person, apparatus, system, work which then culminate into a belief system. In the case of capitalism (or the…
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