Political chest thumping, nothing more. They can now show their local constituents that they are actively doing something worthy, and that is relevant in the social media.
I'd swear I made this exact point a few pages ago but people decided to ignore it. McKinley was bought by the industrial giants at the time. People like to think the game has changed, it hasn't. Yes, the industries are different, but the principles are the same. The people at the top of the economic food chain have pretty much ran this country since the industrial revolution. Oligopoly, monoply, free market, all great terms. In my opinion we still have a free market. I can go open a sporting goods store if I want to. I can start my own pharma company if I have the means. Will my sporting good company be able to compete price wise with Dicks? No, but are they directly preventing from entering the market? No. If I do well at that store, I can grow and become a direct competitor. The barriers to entry are not as high as you make them out to be. Henry Ford had a hell of a time entering the market, look it up, he didn't just decide to build a car and people were fine with it. Transforming from a small business to large one takes more managing. Once you get on the radar of an industrial giant or giant in that industry you become a target. But for the start ups the barriers to entry are still quiet low, however, directly competing and taking revenue away from large companies is something they do not like.
Sporting goods? Yes. Pharma? No. You likely dont have the means to cover $2 Billion, which is the average cost it takes a pharma company to jump through FDA hoops and bring 1 drug to market. And thats VI's point. Those are high barriers to entry, some being insurmountable. Barrier to entry doesnt necessarily mean you cant enter the market, it means you cant realistically compete in it. And yes, those barriers can be overcome, and that happens every year. Its just few and far between.
Capital intensive businesses have intrinsic barriers to entry, not ones put in place by competitors. Sporting goods and pharma are oddly good examples. For sporting goods, the barriers to entry are much the same as any small business, labor, merchandise, store space, market competition, but all really bland uninteresting things. There are no laws in place saying a sporting good store must pay a new store tax that is incredibly high and prevents that person from entering because that must be paid immediately in addition to above costs. Pharma is an capital intensive industry. As such the model is different and the barriers to entry are different. Pharma ideally produces a drug which will be consumed and have some sort of beneficial effect. That process is so capital intensive that only a few companies can carry that out from inception all the way through. Thats why we see the big pharmas we do. Very few medium to small research companies have the cash on hand to conceive, research, test patent, do clinical trials, then produce anything. Additionally, this is why we see the business model we do with pharma. Ideally, if you're an upstart, you develop a concept or compound that has promise. This company doesn't have the capital to do all the labor intensive research and clinical trials. Left alone without capital injection from some vc's any potentially promising viable or productive compound would whither and likely never be put into full production because this company doesn't have the money to sink into clinical trials and all the costs associated with that long capital intensive process. This is where big pharma steps in. Big pharma does not dissuade small companies from researching, rather its in its own interest to encourage it. Big pharma does not have the time or ability to chase drugs that may or may not work. They are under a different mandate, one set by shareholders, board members etc. Big pharma must produce. So what they do is instead of chasing leads in their own labs, they'll often buy out companies on the verge of producing a drug, finish the process, drug makes it into the market. This is exactly why we see Merck etc buying companies for a single drug. Their mandate is growth, they don't have the time or really political capital (within their company) to pursue drugs that end up failing. So sporting goods and pharma, both low barriers to entry. Anyone can start up a research firm just the same as anyone can open up a sporting good store. One takes a hell of a lot more time and money to produce anything, and thats why we see the industries we do. People hate this model, but with capital intensive ventures, its often the big companies who are really the only ones who can get anything to the market because of this long, costly, process. One last thought, this is why we have patent laws, this is why drugs have patents, so the cost of development can be recuperated, not so that the pharma can stick it to the little guy with heart disease.
This is where many people want to have their cake and eat it too. They think that big business needs to be curtailed to preserve competition or for whatever other reasons, but it's the very government they support that hinders competition. But instead of relaxing or eliminating regulations they want more. Which moves things further toward a command economy, which is bad.
Call me crazy but regulations and clinical trials with pharmaceuticals is a necessary and costly evil. There's lots of shit of Mexico that the FDA hasn't approved that you could try. China is good for that too.
Ok, you're mixing theories, and applying free market principles to what is an Oligopoly. Remember, the 'free' in 'free market' means 'free from interference' which includes regulations. Now, with Big Pharma, they benefit greatly (and want to protect) their patents. These are regulations. You are also aware that, for instance, Big Pharma wrote many of the provisions in the ACA. Like the provision that provides that they don't have to negotiate with the government for lower prices on mass quantities of drugs. Point one here is big business is asking for regulations that are beneficial to them. They are not, nor do they want to, operate in a free market because they would lose all their intellectual property. They would also lose billions of sales due to regulations like Medicare/Medicaid and the ACA. So let's be clear on that: big business wants regulation, but they want their regulation. Which is fine. Point two here is when an industry has barriers of entry that are too high, it doesn't function as a free market. You can't go out and start your own pharmaceutical research company. It would cost billions. Despite the fact that they are one of the few industries that has turned a profit in almost every (and it might be every) year since 1970. It's obviously a very good business to go into. Lots of people know that, so why doesn't someone come along and start their own company and undercut the monoliths? Because the barriers of entry are so high (and I'd argue almost impossible) to surmount to enter and compete in the market. Point three here is what do you (the consumer, the non ultra wealthy citizen) do in the face of economic inequality such as is present in the US? The reality is you can do almost nothing. The only hedge that I am aware of (other than an industry becoming obsolete due to an invention or the like) is regulate that industry. Point four here is free market theory also has an element of voluntariness, or to put it another way, a lack of duress. When it comes to medicine you need to live, and only one company makes it and can essentially charge whatever it wants because you have to pay it or die, that's not a consumer in the free market, that's extortion. So this blind knee jerk 'deregulate' response you seem to have to everything is misguided. Business wants regulations, but they want their regulation. The rhetoric you are parroting comes out of the Reagan administration (who despite his rhetoric increased the debt and size of the government greatly - but to the benefit of the wealthy) - and is still around today. A lot of it was based on the work of a guy named Laffer - and the 'Laffer Curve' which basically said if you decrease tax rates, you'll increase revenue. After forty years of this policy, most economists agree that 'trickle down' economics (which the Laffer Curve was the basis for economically speaking) doesn't work. Right now you're asking 'why do I give a fuck about the Reagan administration and this Laffer guy? Who is one of the economic advisors to Rand Paul's campaign and one of the architects of his 'new' tax plan? Laffer.
Oligopolies can be measured mathematically (to some degree, not fully). This gets pretty deep into the weeds of econometrics, but the effect two larger players in a system (in this case, the US economy) have on each relative to the market would usually get measured by the following equation: pi = POPi θ1 + COMPi θ2 + i. This will measure the price two players in a market, in geographic regions will have on each other relative to each other and according to the demand of the population (consumers). Thats a very abridged version of the larger equation, but in layman's terms you measure a strength of an oligopoly through regression analysis. If you dont understand that, I have a Masters in Econ and I barely do. It gets really, really heavy into linear algebra.
And folks thought a statue of NBF was bad... http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/10/no-red-carpet-for-satanic-statue-slated-for-detroit-unveiling/
There are a few things I find annoying about modern economics. The first is all models are retrospective, they were formulated after a specific event happened to describe the specific event. The fit the model to the event, a novel set of circumstances can't be described because of that. Another is the intense level of math. Economics essentially describes human behavior, not too different from sociology, but to distinguish itself economics has higher level math that really does nothing at all to describe what people are going to do when. Rather it serves to help some person write an academic paper that really has no real world value. Btw, I do have a degree in Economics and it wasn't easy. However, the lack of ability to predict or describe anything new really tends to unnerve me. Its like when medicine encounters a disease its never seen before, what can physicians do?
Ludwig von Mises: "As a method of economic analysis econometrics is a childish play with figures that does not contribute anything to the elucidation of the problems of economic reality."
It has come out, from the FBI no less, Storm Roof should not have been eligible to purchase the .45 firearm used in the shooting. "Roof had been arrested for possession of narcotics in February, a felony charge that alone did not disqualify him from buying a gun. But Comey said Roof’s subsequent admission of the drug crime would have triggered an automatic rejection of his gun purchase if the information had been properly recorded in criminal-record and background-check databases." https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...09fda0-271f-11e5-b72c-2b7d516e1e0e_story.html I am both incredulous and not surprised that an almost instantaneous information system is defeated by a clerical error. I touched on it earlier in this thread, we don't need new gun laws, we need to enforce the existing ones properly. Props to the FBI actually taking some of the blame, I guess. Those people are still dead. The chain of command in remedying this information is still going to be a muddy, blame avoiding bureaucratic nightmare.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you theory explains everything, but calling it useless and denying it's applications toward anything is really pushing it. I don't totally disagree, but if someone is going to describe and explain economics using actually historical trends and results is pretty important. Typically, economic models will not only examine one event and ignore everything else either. Regarding the confederate flag - I think the people who put them on their cars and in front of their houses are idiots. but it's no one's business to say they can or can't. Removing flags from cemeteries and lot of other measures suggested are going way too far. Then again, while I wouldn't say it's a totally unimportant topic I find it weird how much some people care about this shit.
I don't think it's weird at all. Americans are wonderful at ignoring the real issue (in this case race and treason) underlying the flag and focusing on something that we can 'all feel good' about which gives the illusion of 'making progress' when in fact the underlying issue isn't being resolved at all. We do this with so many issues it's scary.
The guy you're quoting was an economist in the early 1900s. Although he made some contributions to classical liberalism, his ideas regarding utility are largely rejected by the majority of economists. That's like saying algebra is pointless. Econometrics is what separates fact from theory.
What I'd like to know is where they find these folks for the sound bites..."It makes me physically ill every time I see that flag" or something similar. After a certain time you become desensitized to things....especially if that certain amount of time is your whole fucking life. I've talked with several black friends who live down in the south (Mississippi & Louisiana) and they told me they've never paid a second thought to the flag and think it's a horrible and dangerous idea the limits these idiots are pushing the whole ban thing. They are actually nervous now about what may happen.
Please don't post anything from that SJW-fronted fagrag. It devalues this thread. People don't care about the removal of the flag as much as they care about being NOTICED that they care.
This guy is a dipshit and just making matters worse. So who is this person telling us (Wrongly) what the flag means to black Americans? Uh. Yeah.
Yeah, he's a real fucking genius. I'm not a grammar fascist, but if you can't even write the title of your fucking article correctly you don't deserve to be taken seriously. I get that it's a fairly shitty symbol, but comparing it to the swastika is dumb. That's generally what these idiots do though. Don't like something? Just keep saying it's the same as the Nazis. I didn't mean weird as in atypical or unexpected, but it's just weird to me how obsessed some of these people are. I mean, there's a lot of people in the country who vote based on shit like this, which is baffling to me considering how many other topics are infinitely more important.