Re:The Economic Cost of Populism
by RandomLensman on Saturday September 16, 2023 @08:50AM
(#37534359)
A lot of the capital allocation is driven by rules and regulation (incl. on taxation) - the political say is much bigger than you make it out to be.
The shareholder of big companies is usually other big companies, universities, or… the people. The people own these things by way of retirement funds, savings accounts, CDs, index funds, etc. It’s just that they are often unaware.
The financial industry definitely has outsized power and charges excessive fees but the situation is not at all as simple as the financial industry owning everything. It’s a complicated web of ownership with finance being deeply embedded within it and controlling a lot of the hubs of the network effect.
The Financial Sector(banks/insurers/real estate/stocks/bonds) has a much larger say on the allocation of resources (the economy) than anyone else including politicians and individual corporations.
The counter balance is not just people. It has to come from people+industry. The western industries have basically been hollowed out thanks to financialization.
Even Google and Apple bow to the shareholder. The shareholder doesn't do any actually work, but is sitting on his ass demanding greater rewards even if it means fucking others over, or even the entire system. Same thing with real estate and insurance. So we end up with monopolies.
Now the system is fucked, cause we have already peaked in terms of customers available to milk. Everyone is in debt to keep things afloat. The FED balance sheet has jumped from 900 billion to 9 trillion in mostly junk debt charade up. People/Politicians we already saw during 2008 gfc folded when they had a real shot at change.
Its in the interest of Google, Apple et al to use their influence to get on the right side of this.