"The leader of the party of consumers and taxpayers argued against a measure to increase competition and lower prices because it might upset incumbent capital. In that single statement, the party’s modern priority was laid bare: protecting established businesses now trumps the creation of competitive markets for consumers. The 'consumer' in the party’s name has been forgotten entirely."
#BryceEdwards, 2026
@strypey Bryce is carring the Rulling Class' water. Unwittingly I hope
High supermarket prices are a useful distraction. Some very small changes could be made by more competition, but SFA
The problem is low incomes. The Rulling Class wants you to see a supermarket duopoly as a bogeyman, and not campaign for higher incomes
In the brain dead, and deeply antisocial analysis of the New Zealand elites, higher incomes mean lower profits, so "look at the supermarkets "
FTC
@worik I disagree with every single part of this post, and I'm wondering why you're suddenly channeling Rimmer's corporatist reputation laundering.
@worik
> The Rulling Class wants you to see a supermarket duopoly as a bogeyman, and not campaign for higher incomes
I agree they don't want to give working people higher incomes. The ruling class are the ones who own the supermarkets and other oversized businesses operating as cartels. They don't want people criticising those cartels either, nor do they want criticism of the game of Monopoly they're playing with the property market.
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@worik
> higher incomes mean lower profits
... is Economics 101. A business has 3 main inputs; land (raw material's), labour, and capital. The output of a business is split up among the suppliers of each, accounted for as; expenses, wages/ salaries, and profits, respectively.
For one to go up, one of the others has to go down. We have cartels making excessive profits because for decades they've been keeping wage and salary growth low. For incomes to rise, profits must return to Earth.
@strypey they eat each other. So targeting individual businesses is acceptable, but attacking the "low wage" system is not.
The Rulling Class have "class loyalty" but zero collegiality
@worik
> targeting individual businesses is acceptable, but attacking the "low wage" system is not
Sure, but Bryce Edwards is making a structural critique of the "crony capitalism" of NZ corporate culture as a whole. See the follow up piece I've been quoting from this morning, about the chronic incompetence of NZ corporate execs and their dependence on lobbying and campaign donations to keep their dysfunctional businesses afloat.
@strypey that is what they think. It is the micro storey
Increasing income I creases consumption and that I creases profits. It is a virtuous circle. But if you only count what is actually in your hands, you cannot see that
@worik
> Increasing income I creases consumption and that I creases profits
You can't have your cake and eat it too. For wages/ salaries to go up, a higher proportion of what the economy produces has to go to workers. That means that the share taken as profit (return on capital) has to go down.
Increasing income I creases consumption and that I creases *revenue*. But if more of that revenue is going into lifting workers' incomes, it can't also be lifting profits.
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The deeper issue here, as Jane Kelsey pointed out a decade ago in The FIRE Economy, is that the biggest profits are being made in businesses that are parasitic on the productive economy. Her book title refers to Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, but to that I'd add "IP".
There are huge companies now that produce nothing but brand images and "IP" monopolies (eg grApple). Getting richer by extracting huge rents from the smaller businesses and freelancers who actually make stuff.
@strypey the share that is profit deceases but the total goes up.
Hmmm.... Wilson and Picket (IIRC) point out that relative wealth is what drives satisfaction
@worik
> the share that is profit deceases but the total goes up
See the second post. This only holds if the growing businesses actually produces something of value, rather than being rent-seeking parasites like the supermarket duopoly, who produce nothing but higher food prices.
Supermarkets paying more money mean workers buy more, better, products etcetera
This is well known and understood in economics (look up efficency wages and Hery Ford's reasoning about paying his workers enough to buy his cars)
The people in power seem to want to drive us to the point where there are no prosperous workers, only prosperous owners. That is probably hat they want but it os a fallacy
(Rent seekers do not pay wages)
@worik
> Rent seekers do not pay wages
That's just observably wrong. It's about as arguable as claiming that gravity pulls things away from the ground. I can't see any point continuing a discussion if what I get back is obvious nonsense. Go read a book.
Maybe Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom. Or Giblin and Doctorow's Chokepoint Capitalism. Or The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly. Or Debunking Economics by Steve Keen Or even David Graeber's Debt. Neoclassical economics is bunk.
Please do not be rude
You know this is one of my areas of expertise, decades of study.
"Rent seeker" meams an entity that gers passive income from no productive work
They do not pay wages by definition
@worik
> "Rent seeker" meams an entity that gers passive income from no productive work. They do not pay wages by definition
As I said, that's observably wrong. Any company that outsources its production to third parties becomes an IP rentseeker. This includes all the big tech companies. Do they not pay wages or salaries.
The supermarket duopoly extract rents from suppliers, owners-operators of stores, and customers. Do they not pay wages or salaries.
Banks, gentailers, etc, etc, etc.
@worik
> Supermarkets paying more money mean workers buy more, better, products
Not if prices go up as fast as wages, or faster. What needs to go up is the share of the wealth pie on any given day that workers can obtain with their incomes. Which necessarily means that either costs have to be cut so suppliers' share goes down, or the share going to profit goes down.
The cake only grows if the productive economy grows, not the FIRE+IP economy that parasites off it.
Now you might not like the market structure, you might think that a duopoly allows for higher profit margins than they deserve, but being able to charge higher prices due to a Monopoly is not the same as rent seeking. If the duopoly was being maintained by establishing some sort of statutory exclusivity, such as making it unlawful to start a third supermarket business or lobbying to ensure only property they own is zoned for operating a supermarket, that arguably could be rent seeking behavior. The fact that no one else has started up a grocery store is likely a separate issue.
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@sj_zero
> being able to charge higher prices due to a Monopoly is not the same as rent seeking
It allows them to make money out of owning the majority of the supply chain. Well above what they used to be able to make when there were a dozen or so independent chains around the country, competing for both customers and suppliers. Making money from owning things = rent seeking, pure and simple.
> Not if prices go up as fast as wages
Duh!
I mean real wages.
Paying people more than they need for subsistance
It is good for everybody
Unless you suffer from having a smaller wealth gap....
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@worik
> Paying people more than they need for subsistance
... which means profits go down as a share of total income. Especially where what news media are calling "excessive profits" are effectively monopoly rents on top of actual profit on providing goods and services.
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Take the example of a cafe that rent a building. They struggle to pay higher wages while covering costs, because a big chunk of their income pays rents, literally.
If the monopoly power of big landlords is comprensively addressed, eg making it easier for businesses to own their own premises, then it's a lot easier to push pages up without bankrupting marginal businesses.
@worik
> "rent seeking" is a technical term
Sure is. In economics it means extracting income from owning things, rather than from using them to provide goods and services. Do we agree on this, because your line of argument suggests you have a very different definition in mind.
> Neoclassical economics is bunk.
No it is not. It is a model and it has its uses. Clearly not the whole story
"Neoclassical economics is bunk." is hyperbole.
There is too much ear blocking shouting in economics, we should not add to it!
When I studied economics micro and rational expectations were the dogma. A candidate for bunk, surely?
Economics is full of it, right and left
@worik
> It is a model and it has its uses
The core neoclassical assumptions and axioms are demonstrably wrong. The resulting theory may be useful in some arcane, academic context, but bears no relationship to measurable economic reality. Don't take my word for it, read Professor Steve Keen's book Debunking Economics.
> owning the majority of the supply chain. Well above what they used to be able to make when there were a dozen or so independent chains around the country, competing for both customers and suppliers. Making money from owning things = rent seeking, pure and simple.
That is wrong
You are describing market power.
Be careful, these are slippery concepts. But they are well worked out
@strypey The biggest problem with economics IMO is using numbers in the models. They model fuzzy relationships, and numeric variables are misleading, they imply precision that does not exist
The general relationship models in neo classical (say the Sollow Growth formular) are really very interesting and enormously useful
Steven Keen objects to the mathematics being low quality but he is falling into the trap of adding and multiplying I economics models, which goes beyond their usefulness
@worik
> The general relationship models in neo classical
... fail to match reality when applied to real world economic data, which is what Keen does.
> he is falling into the trap of adding and multiplying I economics models
That's not what he does. He uses real world economic data, not purely theoretical models derived from ideological convenient 'first principles', as neoclassicals do. That's why he predicted the GFC years before, and not a single neoclassical did.
@strypey which is why I say he is wrong.
The models will not tell you the inflation rate t tomorrow, but they will give a very good indication if it will be higher or lower.
That is useful, it is used all the time, daily, effectively
@worik
> Of course
So why do you argue, for example, that rent-seekers don't pay wages? Lots of companies that employ people make some or all of their income from owning things, not from productively deploying them.
Eg Nike hasn't been a shoe-making company for decades. It makes money by licensing its name and logo to companies who do make shoes (see Naomi Klein's book No Logo). Most if not all of its income is rent. But it definitely pays wages and salaries.
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Say a future govt passed a pro-competition regulation banning a company from owning both retail and wholesale operations. Like the rules that prevent a power company owning both lines and retail operations.
Says Woolworths and Foodstuffs responded by selling their wholesalers, and keeping their retail brands. They'd still have huge market power, but not the ability to extract rents from suppliers and downstream store owners by owning wholesale.