And yet, this is the inevitable end-game of unfettered capitalism: to monopolize a market and prevent new entrants so as to eliminate competition and lock-in customers to a single producer that can set prices to whatever they want.
If the orange Cheeto was truly interested in combatting corruption, he would break apart this entire industry clear down to individual factories and processing plants, and implement laws to prevent anyone from ever buying out anyone else. Consolidation would be impossible, only organic growth would still be legal.
Or just put the entire industry under public control by nationalizing the industry. Without investors and CEOs to Hoover up those profits, prices could crater by 80% or more without affecting production or maintenance.
Yes, but we understand that game and have a strong legal base to tackle it as well (see: Cartels & the Sherman Act/Clayton Acts).
Further - It's REALLY hard to keep a cartel stable (much less secret) if there are more than single-digit members. Hell - OPEC is a great example. It's only 12 country members, and they can barely hold the thing together. Angola just left last year over disagreements...
So breaking up the monopoly and continuing to apply existing cartel laws would be a perfectly fine approach to tackling this problem. It's really disingenuous to imply we can't fix this. We can and have. It's like people don't remember "Robber baron" history at all...
Do you work in tech? Do you hope your startup is acquired? I think a lot of people here would not favor the idea of companies not being able to buy other companies.
Traditionally in the US, monopolies are managed by either forcing breakup/divestiture (the the company is already a monopoly) or regulating the maximum market share consolidation (preventing mergers which consolidate beyond that threshold).
And tech is different from agriculture. Governments will go overboard to prevent famine or hyperinflation of food prices because both with cause massive political and social instability. Tech doesn’t (currently) plan an equivalent role in our lives, so people could tolerate monopolistic behavior in tech longer than in core agriculture.
You can both be opposed to monopolies and in favor of sensible acquisitions.
Being pro-markets and pro-capitalism is not the same thing as being in favor of letting companies run rampant with M&A with no consideration for market power or monopolization.
> this is the inevitable end-game of unfettered capitalism
The US isn't even close. There are loads of regulations -- active and passive. If you want to get a view of places closer, look at the economies of Singapore and Hongkong.
If you consider breaking up big companies to be "socialist", then there is no problem with that type of "socialism" except associations that only exist in your head because you are considering every kind of "socialism" to be the same thing.
That wasn't the main idea (which is also the idea that mentioned Trump), that was a secondary one. The main idea was just breakups. The comment I replied to summarized the whole suggestion as socialism.
If the orange Cheeto was truly interested in combatting corruption, he would break apart this entire industry clear down to individual factories and processing plants, and implement laws to prevent anyone from ever buying out anyone else. Consolidation would be impossible, only organic growth would still be legal.
Or just put the entire industry under public control by nationalizing the industry. Without investors and CEOs to Hoover up those profits, prices could crater by 80% or more without affecting production or maintenance.