Censure on the point of us having been had

Previous gag rule application:

Resolved, That the Hon. John Quincy Adams, by an effort to present a petition from slaves, has committed a gross contempt of this House.

Resolved, That the member from Massachusetts, above-named, by creating the impression, and leaving the House under such impression, that said petition was for the abolition of slavery, when he knew it was not, has trifled with the House.

Resolved, That the Hon. John Quincy Adams receive the censure of this House for his conduct referred to in the preceding resolutions.

Game Theoretic Algorithmic Price Fixing

This speculative supposition assumes there’s an equilibrium of collusion:

The argument here, if it is right, is twofold. One – that even without direct collusion, firms’ best strategy may be to act as if they are colluding by maintaining higher prices.

Markups

Really interesting comment about market power, regulation and legacy product lines:

Take a US manufacturer of a specific product, a series of manufacturers. An established market, one that is growing a bit faster than the economy. Lots of manufactured products, some large some small, all with at least three major players who compete for business. Over time the whole industry gets bought up by three major corporations, and this industry is a small part of their whole. The manufacturing plants get moved offshore, and the local operations are sales and engineering. Product lines are dropped. Instead of a broad range of products that cover the wide market requirements, it becomes a narrow offering, market segments are simply abandoned. Costs go way down, dramatically so for the products they sell, but markups increase. The old hands who know the industry are gotten rid of. Regulation is their friend; the barriers to entry are insurmountable, natural monopolies are created by limiting choice in the market by any means.

So capital goes down; who needs it. Labor goes down, it is elsewhere. Markup goes up, markup being percentage of the sale above cost.

Shopper Lotter

The important items for purchase:

Federated Microblogging

Like a close oughts microblogging trust:
https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon

Based on OStatus:
https://github.com/OStatus

And GNU Social:
https://github.com/OStatus

Companies and people don’t even want email. But maybe we want our own way of talking.

I’m writing this on a company owned website.

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