<story><title>UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”</title><url>https://promarket.org/un-study-warns-growing-economic-concentration-leads-rentier-capitalism/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>programmingpol</author><text>As a Republican elected official in a southeastern state, I have a front-row seat to what this article points at.&lt;p&gt;The road construction industry used to be a great opportunity for small business people to create for themselves a substantial income. These days, all the companies in our area are owned by conglomerates, backed by billion dollar financial institutions. If you were to risk a million or two or an asphalt plant, they will undercut your prices till you go bankrupt, then inflate their prices once again. The two companies in our area will bid on all of our projects, but it&amp;#x27;s clear they are in cahoots when it comes to their pricing.&lt;p&gt;By our estimates, the taxpayers are overpaying by at least 15% - 20%. In my mind, this robs others of opportunity and transfers wealth from tax-paying citizens to billion dollar companies.&lt;p&gt;No one points this out because the road builders give a lot to politicians. Go against them, and they&amp;#x27;ll spend enough to have the public label you a RINO which, in this neck of the woods, can get you booted from office.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve wished for some time that someone could create a modular asphalt plant that can be packed up on trucks and taken to wherever the job site is. I think companies like this could help regulate prices and make a lot of money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fny</author><text>Your problem is that big business has conflated free-market capitalism with the right to monopoly and convinced your constituency that anti-trust regulation is destructive to a free market when, in truth, oligopoly leads to corruption of the free-market and a farce of capitalism.&lt;p&gt;You need to work on educating your citizenship gradually until they understand the conditions wherein capitalism actually works. That way they might see why breaking up big busines and preventing M&amp;amp;A is often the Right Thing™️ and conservative to do.</text></comment>
<story><title>UN Study Warns: Growing Economic Concentration Leads to “Rentier Capitalism”</title><url>https://promarket.org/un-study-warns-growing-economic-concentration-leads-rentier-capitalism/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>programmingpol</author><text>As a Republican elected official in a southeastern state, I have a front-row seat to what this article points at.&lt;p&gt;The road construction industry used to be a great opportunity for small business people to create for themselves a substantial income. These days, all the companies in our area are owned by conglomerates, backed by billion dollar financial institutions. If you were to risk a million or two or an asphalt plant, they will undercut your prices till you go bankrupt, then inflate their prices once again. The two companies in our area will bid on all of our projects, but it&amp;#x27;s clear they are in cahoots when it comes to their pricing.&lt;p&gt;By our estimates, the taxpayers are overpaying by at least 15% - 20%. In my mind, this robs others of opportunity and transfers wealth from tax-paying citizens to billion dollar companies.&lt;p&gt;No one points this out because the road builders give a lot to politicians. Go against them, and they&amp;#x27;ll spend enough to have the public label you a RINO which, in this neck of the woods, can get you booted from office.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve wished for some time that someone could create a modular asphalt plant that can be packed up on trucks and taken to wherever the job site is. I think companies like this could help regulate prices and make a lot of money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dnautics</author><text>How do you keep the big companies from making the contract awards process too difficult for entrant players.  I&amp;#x27;ve seeb see this, for example, in [TLA] contracting where in practice some players hire full time staff at 100k+ to even get all the forms correct.&lt;p&gt;And then if the contracting award process is too easy, how do you fix the problem of keeping fraudsters out and the contractors accountable?</text></comment>