05-15-2020, 11:57 PM
(04-30-2020, 11:33 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(04-29-2020, 09:06 AM)David Horn Wrote: Ask the industry moguls, "How many workers will you rehire?" Almost none expect to hire anywhere near the same number they had on staff before this all started, so where do their customers get their money?
If they follow through with that, that will be great, since it will mean startups will easily be able hire people without having to compete with monopolists, and small businesses will be able to grow into the areas that the big businesses are refusing to hire people to reenter.
Personally I doubt that the "industry moguls" will keep those promises. Monopolists will not give up their power that easily.
Monopolists and near-monopolists) have real power only if they can suppress competition or (I am thinking of fast food and grocery merchandising) operate upon low-enough margins to make competition pointless. Specialty retailers seem to have largely vanished as hypermarket stores have flourished (think of Meijer in the Midwest). In the town of 10,000 in which I live the card-book-and-gift store and a music-and-video store have disappeared... and such is so in towns of similar size over a 50-mile radius. Where the music-and-video store was, in came a rent-to-own rip-off emporium (it has overpriced schlock available on 'convenient weekly payments' whose appeal I have no desire to understand) replaced it. The stereo sold is a set of bloated boxes that give more of a light show than any semblance of high fidelity. Yuck! I'd rather go to Best Buy about 45 to 65 miles away once the lockdown is over. Don;t even ask me about the glossy furniture.
Contrary to a commonplace myth, the 1930's were a wonderful time for starting a business. Real estate was dirt-cheap. Merchandise was available at fire-sale prices without the smell of smoke. Employees were easy to find because many were unemployed. Customers were loyal, especially if they had a relative on your payroll. Spending time at your business was likely more attractive than the dingy flat at which one had been living. Above all, one was unable to get away with any bad habits as an owner-operator. People did expect value for their money, and that included the ability of the business owner to convince one of how well the merchandise fir into the customer's life.
In any event, we have more a problem of material surfeit than of material inadequacy. It may sound like a broken record on my part, but further increases in productivity will not make Americans' live better.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.