It would only take a few of the 17 companies that own nearly everything to affect hundreds of millions of products worldwide.

https://buildremote.co/companies/own-everything/

That article provides no data to show that the conglomerates mentioned “own nearly everything”. It would be quite easy to add up their US revenues and compare that number to US consumer spending, but they didn’t even bother. In addition to the post’s polemical nature, it is crammed full of pop-up autoplay ads.

Plenty of goods with substitutes (ex: fast food items) have increased substantially in price since the pandemic. People are more than willing to pay historically higher prices for plenty of items that could be replaced with cheaper items.

If people are willing to pay these prices, why should companies not be raising their prices?

There has been an enormous increase in net worth of all age brackets in the US in the last few years (as of 2022 data[1]), all data points adjusted for inflation. I think this is enough to explain why consumers are paying for these items.

Feel free to experiment with this graph tool from the US Federal Reserve's website and please respond if you have any other explanations:

1. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart...

Net worth went up but pre-tax family income is pretty flat. This tells a story that I'm familiar with: those that can afford to invest made a lot of money, but everyday workers are no better off. You don't pay for food by selling property. So these graphs aren't convincing to me of the story you're trying to tell.

Food is an interesting one. In my experience the value of fast food is at an all time low. Before it would be half the price of a sit down place. Nowadays it's more like 80% of the price. I'm not sure what exactly happened there. I went to subway and my bill was $15. I went to a sitdown place and my bill was $19.

> those that can afford to invest made a lot of money, but everyday workers are no better off

According to those graphs, even the bottom quartile saw a substantial increase in net worth during the pandemic [1]. Sure, this is much less in absolute terms than the higher quartiles, but as a percentage increase it's actually far higher (almost 1000% between 2019 and 2022).

This doesn't detract from your point that poorer people don't benefit much from capital gains, but I think it's still worth pointing out.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart...

A company being part of the supply chain for a lot of goods certainly means something but it doesn't mean they "own everything". They have suppliers of their own, and are themselves suppliers to other companies (grocery stores) before it gets to you.

Which one is the most aligned with your interests is a difficult question, or at least not one I know the answer to, but it's probably not whichever one is the smallest business.

I would frame it slightly differently: people (and by extension, these companies) have always been greedy, so what is the new variable that actually enabled them to convert this greed into higher prices?

Blackrock owns some part of everything

Blackrock and Vanguard's customers (your 401k) own some part of everything. They just manage it.

Blackrock does vote its shares for you most of the time, which can be a big impact, but my understanding is the practical impact of this has mainly been that BlackRock tells companies to care about climate change more and then Republican attorneys general get mad at them for this and write threatening letters about it.

The cycle where CalPERS puts all their money into tech startups and makes Silicon Valley VCs rich is more interesting I think.

Companies don't consider seeking additional profits to be "immoral." Nor did they change behavior, not radically, at least. Companies saw fear, chaos and a lack of resistance from the buying public regarding pricing, and adjusted accordingly.

Personally I don't consider this "greedflation," but post-pandemic economics exposed that the equilibrium between producers and consumers was vulnerable to a major shift (in favor of the producers), and they took advantage of that.

Not enough competition is the problem.

What do you think capitalism optimizes for?

I would say capitalism is a system which innately maximizes for greed. When the money supply expands, greedflation is outright expected - no collusion or conspiracy required.

The article is not making claims of any conspiracy. The companies can act individually to exploit a situation. Corporate greed. You're missing the context of higher reported inflation being used as an excuse to increase prices beyond what was necessary.

We're heading into an election cycle - and the incumbent administration desperately needs people to believe the economy is A) Better than it really is and/or B) Evil, Greedy forces are out there thwarting their best efforts.

It's the same sort of misdirection we have in California with gas prices, etc...

Expect a lot more of this type of activist "journalism" in the near future.

They have about another year and things easing up now may actually affect sentiment by election day.