Extreme wealth disparity is not due to a lack of taxes, but rather a lack of competition.

A couple of slices:

Extreme wealth disparity is not due to a lack of taxes, but rather a lack of competition. In a competitive market, profit margins are quite low. If any one company tries to set its prices much higher than the cost of production, rivals quickly undercut it. Unfortunately, large parts of our economy are blocked off from competition by laws and regulations. This allows monopolistic corporations to charge exorbitant prices.

…

Therefore, it is important to understand how billionaires create and maintain these monopolies that allow them to amass such unfathomable riches.

And:

A lack of competition allows billionaires and their corporations to not make, but take wealth from everyone else. It is not enough to merely tax them on their ill-gotten gains. We need reforms to ensure that they can’t exploit and fleece everyone in the first place.

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  • Nougat@fedia.io
    611·
    13 days ago

    Unfortunately, large parts of our economy are blocked off from competition by laws and regulations. This allows monopolistic corporations to charge exorbitant prices.

    No, no, no, no. No. This is libertarian bullshit. Laws and regulations ideally force a fair playing field, and ensure consumer safety. Take away regulation, and “whoever is most unethical” scoops up mad profits until and if consumers catch on to the scam.

    But even regulation can’t make a fair playing field when the market is dominated by megacorporations who have the economic power to prevent any new competition from challenging them, unless that new competition already has huge economic power itself.

    The problem isn’t the lack of competition. The problem is capitalism.

    • Doomsider@lemmy.world
      51·
      12 days ago

      Read the article again. The author was pointing out intellectual property allows corporations to extract monopoly rent from society.

      These laws like patents, trademarks, and copyrights have allowed big business to dominate our economic system.

      Worse than this they use intellectual property to lockup and control our very culture that they have created through exploiting workers.

      It is an extreme imbalance and perversion of the way science and arts have existed for thousands of years.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
        31·
        12 days ago

        The article advocate for a libertarian world. Getting rid of parents and copyright is good, imagining that competition will bring a better world is plain stupid though. It is precisely the libertarian ideal. And it only lead to neo-feudalism.

    • H4CK3RN4M3D4N63R570RM@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      Is it possible they imply the WRONG laws and regulations are being made? We obviously still need law but when these rules make it impossible to stop monopolistic behavior, they need to be changed. Laws and regulations can instead be used to encourage competition and smaller businesses. Personally, I believe it should be much harder to maintain a huge corporation than a smaller company.

      • JairajDevadiga@lemmy.worldOP
        1·
        12 days ago

        Yes. Nobody is saying that there should be no laws and regulations (not even the libertarians). What I am saying is that the current laws enable the rich to create and maintain monopolies and line their pockets at the expense of everyone else.

    • BlackLaZoR@fedia.io
      32·
      12 days ago

      No, no, no, no. No. This is libertarian bullshit

      It isn’t bullshit, but there’s a lot of nuance missing. Majority of the economy works efficiently (aka low margins) based on this principle, but there are corner cases - particularly services with strong network effects that cause single provider to dominate the market