Wild. Of all the things that do not seem to be under threat and desperately needing a newspaper to stand up and defend them: free markets in America.
Those free markets really did benefit the people and the country. And they were compatible with taxes and tariffs.
Bezos is using the corrupted modern meaning, “free to charge economic rent” because he wants amazon to capture a greater share of global economic activity
Usage varies, but most commonly "free market" refers to an economy that is not centrally planned. All economies have at least some level of central planning, as well as at least some degree of economic freedom for participants, so the term is somewhat like the usage of "right" and "left" in politics, where it just indicates which side of a center line someone or something falls. Any market on the free-er side of the "center" can be described as a "free market."
So it has basically just become an antonym of socialism. I don't think it necessarily implies anything about a tacit approval of rent seeking in the economy.
He's trying to get them to stop promoting socialism/statism.
Except that in Trump 1.0, he signed a free trade deal with MX and CA and said:
> The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history.
* https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/pr...
But now it's a bad deal:
* https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-usmca-nafta-tariffs-can...
and wants to impose 25% tariffs on MX and CA—in violation of the free trade deal that he signed.
And it's not like they are respecting the intention of NAFTA - what's an agreement worth if the US can unilaterally decide to hack around their agreements.
Industry funded patient information and the slippery slope to New Zealand
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2001072/
In New Zealand and the US, the only two developed countries that allow direct to consumer advertising of prescription medicines, opposition has grown steadily from both the public and doctors. New Zealand's health system is much closer to those in Europe than the US system. So what can we learn from its experience?
Rise of advertising
Unlike most other developed countries, New Zealand never enacted pre-emptive legislation to prevent direct to consumer advertising.
The adverts started appearing in the early 1990s, and steadily increased.
But the US Food and Drugs Administration relaxation of regulatory requirements for broadcast advertising in 1997, unleashed an explosion in both the US and New Zealand.
Last year drug companies spent over $5bn (£2.5bn; €3.6bn) on direct to consumer advertising in the US and tens of millions of dollars in New Zealand.
But looking now I'm also seeing "due to heavy lobbying by the pharma industry, including the US pharmaceutical companies" as to why it hasn't been shut down. But I stand corrected.
It sparked curiousity.
Now I'm thankful Australia had laws in place ahead of any pharma drama.
They don't want a free market. They want to be free to control the market.
2. Big corporations actually like, encourage, and write the regulations because they form a moat for which smaller competitors can't cross (how is this news to this website?).
The lesson is don't let corporations write regulations, not "obviously regulations are always bad".
> They want to be free to control the market
1. One of the tell-tale signs of regulatory capture is when the Government's efforts do little to control/limit a corporation. Like when they end up relegated to 'middleman' between the corporation and consumer.
2. Regulations that serve as a 'moat' against competition is the carrion call for free markets. Capitalism thrives on competition. If the only competition they face is what they allow, then they have no incentive to innovate and create value, only maximize the value they already have.
The counterpoint to #1 doesn't mean that we don't need to trim the fat... but there is a MAJOR difference between what businesses and the average–joe consider 'fat'.
That is what I think is so scary about this, there is no chance Beelzebub's idea of a free market matches my own.
you do realize there's no such thing as a carrion call?
a clarion is a trumpet, and a clarion call is a call for urgency
I suppose with crows ("here's the thing...") you could get a carrion caw
Which ones exactly?
To see this, suppose Bezos talked instead about how the editorial staff needed to prioritize egalitarianism. There are plenty of people who share this value. You can find a great many manifestations of this value in our society. It's embedded into our constitution and legislation. But does that mean that the newspaper would be wrong to defend egalitarianism?
What's meant by "it"?
• 77,302,580 voted for this administration (49.8%)
• 77,935,722 voted against this administration (50.2%)
Source: https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pres...
The Green's usually are identified as being libertarian socialism anyways, so it would not be a horrible cooperation to hang out with Libertarians and discuss how to make environmentalism; nonviolence; and social justice work with civil liberties; non-interventionism; and laissez-faire capitalism.
And then they could state that they're not a spoiler, since they draw voters relatively equally from what might otherwise be Democrats and Republicans.
How much ink needs to be spilled defending ideas that have huge amount of backing, even among people who theoretically are ideologically opposed to it? Elizabeth Warren calling herself a capitalist is a pretty strong indicator of how much capitalist realism has taken hold.
It's like Bezos sending out a note saying that editors need to go out to promote not kicking dogs. Even amongst the supposed enemies of free markets, if you ask them enough questions so many people in the US still basically believe in it. Especially among the Post's readership!
Price fixing was done during World War 2. Actual, real price fixing. Harris talking about a tiny version of that with an anti-price gouging bill during the campaign got the following headline: "When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?"
There is an entire world of political and economic positions that exist that are not represented in the pages of the Post. And on the left, not only could you fit entire major ideologies to the left of the leftmost US newspaper op-ed writers, you could _fit entire ideologies to the left of those ideologies_.
I agree, but the case here isn't for fringe views, it is for more balance and debate within the big tent.
What consumers want is a competitive market with many choices that pushes down prices and forces companies to innovate. What Bezos wants is to crush everybody else.
Starting with FDR and ending with Reagan? I think that the history of US antitrust is more complicated. The first round of trust busting (Sherman Act, Standard Oil) was a generation before FDR, and the period you've highlighted had two great monopolies, AT&T and IBM. I agree that the policy had been pretty much hands off between Microsoft and big tech.
With 25% tariffs Europeans go to the tired European monopoly and Americans get gouged by the American monopolies. The monopolists agree it's great but you pay more for worse services.
Biden and Harris both campaigned on price controls. Trump is all in on tariffs.
The electorate only likes free markets when it makes things cheap with no consequences they care about.
Specifically away from business consolidations and monopolistic tactics. The very kind of thing that may lead to something like the breakup of say Amazon.