More antitrust regulation - have to increase competition. Of course this won’t happen immediately. If I were the president I’d have direly warned the deployment of the defense production act to commandeer basic supply companies and curb their profits. Just a warning would have set them straight.
Update antitrust regulation for modern times and close loopholes; actually break up effective monopolies. Especially in the essential services sectors.
Probably actually _do_ what most people think of antitrust, which probably means undoing the Bork-influenced "immediate consumer welfare only" interpretation of the law. Cory Doctorow has a lot to say about this in Chokepoint Capitalism. That book mainly talks about the big tech aspect of it, but it explains things like chickenization, which is total vertical and horizontal integration of a business, and how it's basically oligopolies all around in the US.
It's easy to essentially collude without directly contacting your competitors if there are only 3 companies in a particular industry. You raise prices, and the other two raise in sync, because consumers have no other place to go.
> direly warned the deployment of the defense production act to commandeer basic supply companies
there'd be no grounds for which this could be reasonable. Usurping private assets is not a thing, and should never be a thing that is allowed in a democratic society with rule of law, except in circumstances such as national defence, or some other emergency. High inflation (which, compared to the 1970s' isn't actually that high) is not such an emergency situation where this form of usurping of private assets would be justifiable.
This is a bit devil’s advocate, but if you accept higher profiteering has been happening, and that this has fuelled inflation data (higher prices effectively devaluing the purchasing power of the $), and that this has led to increased interest rates, has the decision to not intervene (and I’m not saying the GP’s comment is the only way, nor my preferred way) effectively led to “the financial and monetary system” taking more of people’s private assets across the board either by devaluing the worth of their existing dollars and/or, for those with lines of credit, actively “taxing” new dollars they get through higher rates. Not to mention the likely resulting impact on small businesses as investment and consumer $ tighten up, and people who will presumably start losing jobs as the intended impact of these monetary levers hit.
I know the US system is a little different with long-term fixed mortgages, but for much of the world on variable interest rates, central bank decisions have an almost next day impact on income (and a fairly near term impact for those able to lock-in rates for a couple years).
It’s not quite as active as the government seizing assets, and I agree from a liberty perspective in governments not doing that, but from a purely rational perspective if I was presented the option of “once off wealth tax to erode the savings everyone accumulated during Covid (or even better put them into a long-term bond that will be released during a future deflationary period)” and the situation we have right now where they’re netting the same outcome slowly, in the process enabling privileged parties along the way to benefit through siphoning off as the policy levers squeeze, I’m given some pause.
> I know the US system is a little different with long-term fixed mortgages, but for much of the world on variable interest rates, central bank decisions have an almost next day impact on income (and a fairly near term impact for those able to lock-in rates for a couple years).
in the UK: an interest rate change has an immediate effect on demand for new mortgages but a lag of several years on existing borrowers as nearly everyone fixes their mortgage for 2-5 years
In AU some fix all or part for 2-5 years (typically 3 years or less, with discouraging rates for the longer term relative to current rates at the time to factor for risk) but it’s not universal. For example, as of mid 2022 only 5% of loans were taken as fixed.
As a result most who did fix recently did so during Covid low rates for 3 years and are coming off now facing hikes from maybe 1.89-2% if they got the best fixed rates (at a time when the cash rate was 0.1% and variable was around 1%) to around 6% variable and 7.8% if they want to fix again.
Despite this idea being popular, it is not true in the sleightest. From Land being taken over for infrastructure proyects like highways, to peoples priavte property being taken by the police doing arrests, the idea that usurping pirvate assests should never happen only extends to corporations.
Having Amazon as a store front, and a manufacturer that can steal products and sell and promote them under amazon basics brand is one of the most overt cases for regulation to cut their company up into tiny little pieces. And yet the same goverment that will steal your farm to make a highway now thinks that taking up shareholder value is an afront agianst democracy itself
