You're being downvoted because you misunderstood the post you're replying to. They aren't referring to profit margins, but marginal utility—i.e. incremental improvements to stop spacing (purportedly) would not be enough to fix a fundamentally broken system.
> as primary means of transportation and arguably more importantly as a backup means of transportation
One bus route can't wear two hats. Faster, sparser routes are typically complemented by slow, meandering collector routes which provide the kind of backstop you describe. Moreover, elderly and disabled people can use paratransit [1], which exists precisely to serve people with mobility issues too severe for regular transit.
Anyway, I reject the notion of buses as a second-tier transit option reserved for poor and disabled people. The only way poor people ever get decent service is when they use the same infrastructure that affluent people do. A bus system that doesn't serve the middle class is a system that will quickly lose its funding and become inadequate for anyone to use.
You've got a point, but the article's thesis is still correct.
The article points to case studies where reducing stops increased ridership: clearly this does make a difference
But I agree that truly good bus service requires commitment and budget. A city that only improves its transit in fast, cheap ways is doomed to bad transit.
Capitalism is not the only way of life (and fwiw, I'm not a fan)—but it is the primary way of life for nearly the entire world. Sweden, Norway, Brazil, France, Egypt, Iraq, and India are capitalist. Even China is effectively capitalist, although they like to call themselves "socialist with Chinese characteristics."
No, Google does not have the right. If you're building roads, you don't have a right to build them unsafely. Doesn't matter if they're privatized or not; they're important infrastructure for which we don't have meaningful alternatives.
Yeah they're describing a real problem, but the cause of that problem—a seamless centralized sign-up funded by VC money—is the reason bluesky took off to begin with.
Bsky offers an on-ramp to a more decentralized experience, but most people won't pay the money and experience the friction to move take that ramp. Platforms like Mastodon are entirely decentralized, but that means the friction of decentralizing happens immediately upon sign-up. The people who don't want to self-host PDSes never signed up for Mastodon to begin with.
I try to be skeptical, but I feel like bsky (or something like it) is the best way can do re: bringing decentralization to the masses.
> Platforms like Mastodon are entirely decentralized
They are not, they're federated and that distinction really matters here. A decentralized platform would be designed to make running your own single user or at least small instance the default but neither ActivityPub nor ATproto do that.
That's patently false. AT&T was a monopoly and they were broken up by antitrust regulation. The absolute most you can say is that some regulations enable monopoly. I contend that we simply should pass the good kind of regulations instead.
Monopoly is enabled by market forces such as economies of scale. Monopolization is a natural market process which happens on its own unless it is actively prevented.
> big pharma loves high regulatory barriers because it keeps competitors out
The FDA, for all the flaws of its current incarnation, is the archetype of necessary regulation. Pre-FDA, the free market did nothing whatsoever to prevent nauseating practices like the adulteration of milk with powdered plaster, lead, and cow brains. The history there is fun but quite gross.
> Somalia
What is notable about Somalia is not its lack of regulation, but the fact that it is perhaps THE least stable country on the planet. It is not the basis for any useful comparison here.
>That's patently false. AT&T was a monopoly and they were broken up by antitrust regulation.
This is patently false in the context of the reply you have made -- after the invention of the telephone more and more and eventually hundreds of telephone services popped up. Then in 1918 (circa WWI), the government effectively quasi-nationalized AT&T by controlling it via a commission and the postmaster general and then AT&T leveraged politicians to create "universal telephone service" provided by AT&T and regulate competitors out of the market while using regulatory capture to use commissions to regulate rates, effectively creating a cartel that drove competitors out of business via regulation.
the whole idea of a "natural market process" here is absolute and utter hogwash. The majority of the market was AT&T competitor up until the regulators stepped in and turned it into an unnatural monopoly enforced by regulatory capture.
>The FDA, for all the flaws of its current incarnation, is the archetype of necessary regulation. Pre-FDA, the free market did nothing whatsoever to prevent nauseating practices like the adulteration of milk with powdered plaster, lead, and cow brains. The history there is fun but quite gross.
You're now arguing why we need regulation rather than whether they create monopolies or not. I see this as a complete red herring, although an interesting topic, that there are some counterpoints to.
> What is notable about Somalia is not its lack of regulation, but the fact that it is perhaps THE least stable country on the planet. It is not the basis for any useful comparison here.
What is notable is that the whole thesis is without regulation it turns into this monopolized hellscape and every inspection of that theory turns out to be false, and sometimes even the opposite.
Anyway, what regulation is responsible for Walmart and Amazon putting local retailers out of business?
> the government effectively quasi-nationalized AT&T
After a big merger put AT&T in charge of the majority of telephone lines in the US, the company used its control over infrastructure to drive its competitors out of business and increase its portfolio. The Justice Department tried to break up AT&T but failed; it was in the settlement of this case that AT&T was first federally regulated in 1913. Yes, AT&T's monopoly grew between 1913 and 1982, but your causality is backwards. They regulated it because it was already a monopoly.
>Anyway, what regulation is responsible for Walmart and Amazon putting local retailers out of business?
Walmart + Amazon combined are only ~16% of the retail business. They're not monopolies. The fact they put a small minority of businesses out of business does not mean they're a monopoly. This is likely part efficiencies and also part regulatory capture via the insane zoning/building regulations in this country and tax breaks that can favor large corporations.
> After a big merger put AT&T in charge of the majority of telephone lines in the US, the company used its control over infrastructure to drive its competitors out of business and increase its portfolio. The Justice Department tried to break up AT&T but failed; it was in the settlement of this case that AT&T was first federally regulated in 1913. Yes, AT&T's monopoly grew between 1913 and 1982, but your causality is backwards. They regulated it because it was already a monopoly.
... It was not already a monopoly. Hundreds of phone companies emerged and by shortly before your noted date of "regulation" those competitors held the majority market share. It became a "monopoly" after the government literally quasi-nationalized them (AT&T) to the point the fucking Postmaster General was basically in charge of it, they became intertwined with regulators, and then the drive for "universal telephone service" and regulatory commissions ensured the regulatory compliance pushed exactly into AT&Ts business model. AT&T intertwined lawmakers even brought in economics quacks to talk up natural monopolies to argue for policies to create the regulations that made AT&T a monopoly. So you have it backwards -- the regulated it from a minority market holder to an unnatural monopoly and lawmakers created this monopoly under the auspices they essentially needed to legislate a "natural" (misnomer) monopoly into existence.
> Walmart + Amazon combined are only ~16% of the retail business.
of ALL RETAIL? That includes groceries! That's huge! Anyway, Amazon is >40% of e-commerce & Walmart is >10%. Together they control more than half of all online commerce. That's definitely monopolistic.
> It was not already a monopoly. […] shortly before your noted date of "regulation" those competitors held the majority market share
From Wikipedia: "AT&T controlled over 80% of the U.S. telephone system market by 1907 and Theodore Newton Vail rejoined the company as its President. Vail negotiated with competitors, charging them fees for connecting to AT&T's long-distance network. These practices led the Justice Department to attempt to breakup AT&T, but a settlement was reached through the Kingsbury Commitment on December 13, 1913. It brought federal oversight into AT&T and led its Bell System monopoly to become federally regulated."
They had an 80% market share pre-regulation. Yes, it was already a monopoly.
>They had an 80% market share pre-regulation. Yes, it was already a monopoly.
Absolute and utter hogwash -- a straight up lie. You must be using a very liberal version of 'control.'
After seventeen years of monopoly*, the United States had a limited telephone system of 270,000 phones concentrated in the centers of the cities, with service generally unavailable in the outlying areas. After thirteen years of competition**, the United States had an extensive system of six million telephones, almost evenly divided between Bell and the independents, with service available practically anywhere in the country.[1]
* My note, under the government imposed patent monopoly period -- Bell's patent expired in the 1894 which started the "years of competition." **13 years of competition marks 1907.
That is, by 1907, the market had dropped from a patent imposed monopoly to half-and-half, and getting shredded further by competition (that is until regulation in 1913, when AT&T started to pick up market share again). This 80% quote is total fiction unless you're using some weasel version of 'control.' The monopolies were all government imposed -- first by the patent and then later by regulation ('universal telephone service' reguluation and commissions and franchises, also ~nationalization and government intervention circa WWI).
Also of interesting note -- to look at the ownership of telephones before and after the Kingsbury committment. They had been falling off a cliff after the patent expired, but then ramped up at pretty much the same time as the Kingsbury Commitment (minima at 1910, with what looks to be 5 year granularity).[2]
>of ALL RETAIL? That includes groceries! That's huge! Anyway, Amazon is >40% of e-commerce & Walmart is >10%. Together they control more than half of all online commerce. That's definitely monopolistic.
And 100% of business with an Amazon logo on it! Amazon has 40% of e-commerce, walmart has 6%, even together they are a minority. Even with all the efficiencies of Amazon logistics they still together can't break half of the market. And even if they did, their margins are so razor thin that they could not engage in monopolistic behavior, as the second they raise prices they can again be eaten alive by the other 54% or one another.
Power is a zero-sum game. We all live in the same space, exist in the same media ecosystem, and have the same number of hours in the day. The media consumed by the public, the structure of our cities, the investments we make in science, the sources we use for energy, the laws we pass and the way they are interpreted, stewardship of our environment, and the degree to which our tax money is used to drop bombs on civilians are ALL zero-sum.
I am so sick of the pretense that GDP growth means inequality is somehow illusory. Yes, TVs used to be expensive and now they are cheap. Big whoop.
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