135
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
135 points (99.3% liked)
News
23320 readers
3197 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Consumer choice in my vocabulary means that I can buy the same thing from different companies, so I, and other consumers, have the ability to "vote with our wallet". I don't care how many different colours you offer your thing, I care whether you are abusing a monopolistic market and if you hike prices I am able to buy from people who don't.
Consumer choice was dead before the pandemic, and it wasn't COVID that killed it, but unchecked mergers and acquisitions, and the US' refusal to enforce basic antitrust law, twisting and breaking global markets.
Right, and recognizing as you do that articles like these are part of the grift, not a separate, objectvely written report by an entity helping us understand the world, is an important lesson for today's citizen. One very few of us know. This article wants to reframe consumer choice as flavors and colors from a monopoly, not your correct definition.
Anyone interested in how that works in this article specifically that cannot see it is welcome to pm me, i love breaking down shit like this to the point i annoy people so beware tho
deleted by creator
I think that voting with your wallet is yet another part of the delusion. It's portrayed by traditional economic theory as fairly universally applicable with some exceptions. I think the reality is showing it might be the other way around. That it works in a limited set of cases and it doesn't in most. If you think about it, if voting with your wallet works for a set of goods, then that has to be a competitive market. Then voting with your wallet should be able to produce winners and losers. What often happens to the losers is them or their productive assets getting scooped up by the winners. In either case that makes the market less competitive. Rinse and repeat until you end up with a single or a couple of choices for that good. E.g. you end up with a couple of grocers.
My "finished econ 101 on the second try with mediocre grades" knowledge says that new companies should get created to compete against the winners if they start abusing the paradigm. In reality, I of course see companies raising the barrier to entry through vertical integration and regulatory capture, among other things.
This article is about this happening less because it isn't profitable.
Exactly. Market failure is described in econ 101 but as I remember it, it's not emphasized as the typical case but rather as the exception. In reality it seems like it's the other way around. Which .. makes sense .. given that competition is not efficient for maximizing profit among other variables.
This is not what "consumer choice" means in this article, and per the article, the consolidation of retail choice at major retailers carves a spot for smaller businesses to offer the variety you're looking for.
In a sense, this is a damper on the thing you don't want - it's a slight nullification of the "Wal-Mart effect"