I wrote in a comment under "Changing the Battlefield" the big issue we are facing as an American economy.
The key idea is this: We are seeing more and more of our economic freedoms being captured by a handful of people. Bit by bit, we are losing power and "THEY" are gaining power.
The American economy was never meant to be this way. We NEVER endorsed "Laissez-Faire". We NEVER embraced unrestrained capitalism. In the 1800s and early 1900s we had a huge national debate about what our economic policy would be and it came down to "ANTI-TRUST."
When someone finds a new way to do something that saves a lot of money, NATURALLY they capture the market. This is GOOD because people see lower prices. But it is also BAD because they are losing their economic freedom. The government was expected to identify monopolies and trusts and to break them up so that regular people had access to the innovations or new technologies.
For instance, from our FOUNDING we had the concept of the PATENT. If you invent something, you get X years where you are allowed to exploit that new technology, but after X years, anyone and everyone could use it and never give you a red penny. The idea was you can get rich inventing new technologies, but you can't control the American people.
In agriculture, we are seeing a HUGE shift away from family farms to huge megacorporations owning or leasing everything and making all the calls about how animals and farm products should be raised and processed. YES, this is financially a good idea, because we all get to save a few dollars on our steaks and eggs. But it is a really, really bad idea because we end up LOSING our economic freedom to buy our steaks and eggs from someone else, or grow our own, or to sell what we grow.
Let me be more specific:
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people own all the land.
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people dominate certain agriculture sectors.
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people run all the processing plants, or the factories, or the stores.
THESE THINGS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.
You may be one of those libertarian types who think that the natural market forces can prevent these things from happening, but IN PRACTICE, YOU ARE WRONG. What inevitably happens is someone captures a segment of the marketplace, AND THEN THEY CAPTURE GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE THEIR MONOPOLY CONTINUES FOREVER.
Thus, it MUST be the policy of the government to BUST MONOPOLIES anywhere and everywhere they can be found. Business will go to government to DESTROY the big corporations, not protect them.
We should have MILLIONS of people owning 100s of acres each, making money farming and ranching.
We should have MILLIONS of people owning stores and supply chains and processing plants and factories.
We should have MILLIONS of people competing over every little thing at all times.
Right now, the key factor seems to be transportation. It used to be that we could ship all of our products anywhere in the US using competing owner-operator truck fleets and rail companies. Now, increasingly, Amazon uses Amazon trucks, Wal-Mart uses Wal-Mart trucks, and so on and so forth. The idea that an owner-operator can compete with Amazon or Wal-Mart is absurd.
We must figure out WHY they cannot compete, and we must make the MORE EXPENSIVE to own thousands of trucks and hire thousands of truckers. We must FORCE the companies to rely on MILLIONS of people they cannot control to distribute their products.
When someone comes up with an innovation that makes life better, they get X years to exploit that. But after a while, they should lose ALL profits from that innovation and turn it over to the people of the United States. I truly believe that at some point, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc... should be busted up so that they are a distant memory, one of many successful competitors.
The key idea is this: We are seeing more and more of our economic freedoms being captured by a handful of people. Bit by bit, we are losing power and "THEY" are gaining power.
The American economy was never meant to be this way. We NEVER endorsed "Laissez-Faire". We NEVER embraced unrestrained capitalism. In the 1800s and early 1900s we had a huge national debate about what our economic policy would be and it came down to "ANTI-TRUST."
When someone finds a new way to do something that saves a lot of money, NATURALLY they capture the market. This is GOOD because people see lower prices. But it is also BAD because they are losing their economic freedom. The government was expected to identify monopolies and trusts and to break them up so that regular people had access to the innovations or new technologies.
For instance, from our FOUNDING we had the concept of the PATENT. If you invent something, you get X years where you are allowed to exploit that new technology, but after X years, anyone and everyone could use it and never give you a red penny. The idea was you can get rich inventing new technologies, but you can't control the American people.
In agriculture, we are seeing a HUGE shift away from family farms to huge megacorporations owning or leasing everything and making all the calls about how animals and farm products should be raised and processed. YES, this is financially a good idea, because we all get to save a few dollars on our steaks and eggs. But it is a really, really bad idea because we end up LOSING our economic freedom to buy our steaks and eggs from someone else, or grow our own, or to sell what we grow.
Let me be more specific:
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people own all the land.
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people dominate certain agriculture sectors.
It is a BAD IDEA to have a handful of people run all the processing plants, or the factories, or the stores.
THESE THINGS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.
You may be one of those libertarian types who think that the natural market forces can prevent these things from happening, but IN PRACTICE, YOU ARE WRONG. What inevitably happens is someone captures a segment of the marketplace, AND THEN THEY CAPTURE GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE THEIR MONOPOLY CONTINUES FOREVER.
Thus, it MUST be the policy of the government to BUST MONOPOLIES anywhere and everywhere they can be found. Business will go to government to DESTROY the big corporations, not protect them.
We should have MILLIONS of people owning 100s of acres each, making money farming and ranching.
We should have MILLIONS of people owning stores and supply chains and processing plants and factories.
We should have MILLIONS of people competing over every little thing at all times.
Right now, the key factor seems to be transportation. It used to be that we could ship all of our products anywhere in the US using competing owner-operator truck fleets and rail companies. Now, increasingly, Amazon uses Amazon trucks, Wal-Mart uses Wal-Mart trucks, and so on and so forth. The idea that an owner-operator can compete with Amazon or Wal-Mart is absurd.
We must figure out WHY they cannot compete, and we must make the MORE EXPENSIVE to own thousands of trucks and hire thousands of truckers. We must FORCE the companies to rely on MILLIONS of people they cannot control to distribute their products.
When someone comes up with an innovation that makes life better, they get X years to exploit that. But after a while, they should lose ALL profits from that innovation and turn it over to the people of the United States. I truly believe that at some point, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc... should be busted up so that they are a distant memory, one of many successful competitors.
Once a group of people or a person obtains a certain amount of wealth or power, they MUST turn to government to ensure their survival. This is a fact of nature.
The idea is that weaker people don't rely on government for their protection because they know that the government can't be trusted. So keep power distributed among the people rather than allowing it to accumulate in a group or an individual.
The difference between millionaires and billionaires is millionaires donate to politicians, while billionaires buy them.
Early on in the history of the US, I'd say before 1850 or so, the idea of a megacorporation was completely foreign. One, governments did not certify anyone willing to form a corporation. Only specific people were allowed to, for a limited time, for a limited purpose. For instance, suppose I wanted to build a canal between point A and point B. It's logical to raise funds by forming a corporation that will raise money, build the canal, then charge a fee for ferry boats to travel along the canal. However, in the early US history, NONE of those corporations were permanent, and they even had to keep applying for permission to continue. The moment the people felt like they've outlived their usefulness, they were disbanded, the assets distributed to the owners, and they were no longer allowed to continue.
Corporations in the early days of the US were seen as a means to an end. The government used them to benefit the people. The idea that a corporation would exist solely to enrich the shareholders was seen as ridiculous. There had to be some greater good they were serving.
After the 1850s or so we started to see people forming longer-living corporations and joining economic interests together and creating true behemoths. This was because they were infiltrating and taking government power. Have you ever heard of Tamany Hall? Anyway, there was a huge fight over this, and eventually the people won and the corporations were split and broken apart. That's why you don't buy gas and oil from Standard Oil. You buy it from one of thousands of different brands of gas stations.
Today, we have a new type of corporation that was previously unthinkable. We have Microsoft and Amazon and Google and Apple. Corporations that grew up faster than they could be broken up. The way they worked is they secured copyrights and patents and effectively prevented anyone from competing against them. While these originally had a lifespan (patents still do -- to a degree) they don't serve the original purpose at all. (I am one of those that don't see a point to copyright in the digital age AT ALL.)
Take Apple, for instance. They create an iPhone, and they have exclusive rights to sell it. No one can create a clone or a similar device. Even if they did, their device would not have access to the "walled garden" Apple has created for their software developers. If you want to list your software in their marketplace so that people can install it, you have to pay a fee or a percentage of ALL of your revenue to Apple.
What SHOULD have happened was the following.
* Maybe Apple gets one or two years, tops, where they can exploit early birds.
* After those few years pass, they MUST open up the technology and software so that ANY OTHER AMERICAN can copy or reproduce what they do and add their own innovations.
* Rinse, repeat. If they want to keep innovating, they have to keep opening up their innovations to the public and competition.
It would go so far, I would say, that even chip fabs can't be owned by iphone manufacturers. If you want to build an iPhone clone, you have to buy the parts in a public marketplace where anyone can buy and sell. No verticals. Anyone who can put a chip fab together can build your chips and sell them to anyone.
The end results would be that companies either don't do business in the US, or they understand that they are serving the public good and donating their technology to the public by doing so.