Uke 12 - Perverterte markeder og illusorisk konkurranse

…

Markeder er komplekse systemer der pris, kvalitet, mm. framkommer som emergente egenskaper.

Det kan finnes utallige produkter/tjenester og utallige måter å framstille disse på. 

I markedet kan den som har behov, velge produkt/tjeneste som er best egnet; man har frihet til å velge.

Tvungen emergens perverterer markedene slik at de slutter å fungere.

I det byråkratiske diktatur (Norge/EU, m.fl.) finnes det direktiver og forskrifter for  alle detaljer mht. framstilling, distribusjon, omsetning og bruk av alle varer og tjenester.

Konkurranse perverteres til å være best til å omgå regelstyringen…‽

Markedsmekanismen perverteres, men man tviholder på illusjonen om "konkurranse".

Realiteten er dårlig kvalitet til høy pris, og storstilt sløseri i form av overkapasitet og oppblåste kontrollsystemer ("konkurransetilsyn", mv.) som sikrer høyt gasjerte stillinger til politikernes uvitende venner og slektninger…


Overkapasitet

Norge har f.eks. flere konkurrerende firma for distribuering av post (Posten, Bring, Postnord, Norpost (konkurs), HeltHjem, osv.), alle med sine oppblåste organisasjoner, lokaler, systemer, kjøretøyer, mv.). Alle har antakelig kapasitet til å håndtere all postombringing i Norge; det meste er uvirksomt, men må betales på et vis…‽


Monopol

I "markeder" som ser ut til å fungere, vil gjerne de store aktørene kjøpe opp eller prise ut små konkurrenter, slik at de skaffer seg monopol og kan selge dritten sin til skyhøy pris. Flere store aktører danner gjerne et kartell og blir enige om markedsdeling, pris og levetid for produktene (jfr. lyspærekartellet fra 1924)


Den irrasjonelle aktør

Økonomer har visstnok antatt at mennesker opptrer rasjonelt. Det gjelder kanskje for økonomer og andre skapninger uten følelser, men for mennesker er det en illusjon; man gjør oftest valg basert på følelser. Dette har vært kjent siden oldtiden, men mange lider fortsatt av lærevegring.




…

Roller og relasjoner

…

Markeder fungerer i form av transaksjoner der vare/tjeneste og penger bytter eier

I alle transaksjoner opptrer aktørene i flere roller iht. ulike relasjoner:




Hver rolle har sine egne kriterier for hva som er god kvalitet, og de er som regel motstridende;




Jfr. AHA Uke 2/2022  




…

Noen sitater:

…

“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”
― Plato (428-348BC)


“The market is the best garden.”
― George Herbert (1593-1633)


“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.”
― Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)


“The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the Führer principle.”
― Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)


“Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates riches.”
― Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)


"The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
― Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)


"There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties."
― Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)


"The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote."
― Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)


"Market competition is the only form of organization which can afford a large measure of freedom to the individual."
― Frank H. Knight (1885-1972)


“Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.”
― Karl Polanyi (1886-1964)


"...labor, land and money are obviously not commodities; the postulate that anything that is bought and sold must have been produced for sale is emphatically untrue in regard to them...Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself...nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life... land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance."
― Karl Polanyi (1886-1964)


"Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill."
― Karl Polanyi (1886-1964)


"I'm looking for a market for wisdom."
― Leo Szilard (1898-1964)


"The law of property determines who owns something, but the market determines how it will be used."
― Ronald H. Coase (1910-2013)


"Success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning. Yet most people don't know how to learn."
— Chris Argyris (1923-2013)


"Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at."
― Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995)


"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."
—Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022)


"We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers-that is to say, as markets."
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)



“Markets do not automatically generate trust, cooperation or collective action for the common good. Quite the contrary: it is in the nature of economic competition that a participant who breaks the rules will triumph—at least in the short run—over more ethically sensitive competitors.”
― Tony Judt (1948-2010)


“A great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft.”
― David Graeber (1961-2020)


"Free market ideology - does anyone know where it first comes from? It comes from medieval Islam, and specifically, Shari'a. Because Shari'a provided this commercial law that is independent from the state."
― David Graeber (1961-2020)


"Adam Smith actually took all his best ideas and lines from sources from medieval Persia. But one thing he doesn't take is the underlying assumption they have that the basis of a market is mutual aid."
― David Graeber (1961-2020)


“The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market.”
― Pope Francis


“The use of market values and technology as a social barometer has devalued the worth of individuals, rendered irrelevant the quality of their lives, and stunted their creativity.”
― Sulak Sivaraksa


"A coherent marketplace is a true market economy coupled with a diverse, open society online. People will be paid for their data and will pay for services that require data from others. Individuals’ attention will be guided by their self-defined interests rather than by manipulative platforms beholden to advertisers or other third parties."
― Jaron Lanier


“World War I saw the end of the era of monetary media being the choice decided by the free market, and the beginning of the era of government money”
—Saifedean Ammous


“Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.”
― George Soros


“There is a powerful case for the market mechanism, but it is not that markets are perfect; it is that in a world dominated by imperfect understanding, markets provide an efficient feedback mechanism for evaluating the results of one's decisions and correcting mistakes.”
― George Soros


“Market forces, not political majorities, will compel societies to reconfigure themselves in ways that public opinion will neither comprehend nor welcome.”
― James Dale Davidson


"Markets are born free, yet no sooner are they born than some would-be emperor is forging chains. Paradoxically, it sometimes happens that the only way to preserve freedom is through judicious controls on the exercise of private power. If we believe in liberty, it must be freedom from both private and public coercion."
― Tim Wu


"Markets are as old as the crossroads. But capitalism, as we know it, is only a few hundred years old, enabled by cooperative arrangements and technologies, such as the joint-stock ownership company, shared liability insurance, double-entry bookkeeping."
― Howard Rheingold


"Globalization can be very unjust and unfair and unequal, but these are matters under our control. It's not that we don't need the market economy. We need it. But the market economy should not have priority or dominance over other institutions."
― Amartya Sen


"We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite."
― Thomas Piketty


“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”
― Thomas Sowell


"We can't leave everything to the free market. In fact, climate change is, I would argue, the greatest single free-market failure. This is what happens when you don't regulate corporations and you allow them to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer."
—Naomi Klein


"In a market economy with the division and specialization of labor, people use others as means to achieve their ends. This is the essence of market cooperation."
― Stephan Kinsella


“No wonder big pharma will do almost anything to protect exclusive marketing rights, despite the fact that doing so flies in the face of all its rhetoric about the free market.”
—Marcia Angell


“Markets weed out inefficient practices, but only when no one has sufficient power to manipulate them.”
― Ha-Joon Chang


"There is no such thing as a free market."
― Ha-Joon Chang



…