The corruption in western nations is more sophisticated, and is better at hiding in plain sight. The type in the east is more furtive, probably out of an effort to "save face".
They differ in style, but not degree.
Over here we call it special euphemisms like "lobbying" and "regulatory capture" instead of "bribery" and "kickbacks". It makes people regard it differently, giving it an air of respectability.
Given the size of the corruption industry in the US, this was inevitable, as it would need a surface level of legitimacy to be able to attract and employ the sheer numbers of people who operate the machinery of the flows of bribery money from industry to servile lawmakers.
Why do you think there are so few major retailers in the US? Media companies? ISPs? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Health care networks? Pharmacies? Pharmaceutical companies? Grocery stores? Food manufacturers? Banks?
It's not lack of supply or lack of demand. Many people wish to manufacture cheap insulin or build better ISPs or more cheap surgery clinics or better grocery stores.
Soon it will be the same with social networks. They already achieved it with app stores, which is the only meaningful publishing today, apps having killed the web.
Anything that has broad social appeal or need which subsequently results in large recurring cash flows will get regulated upon so that the cash doesn't flow to anyone the existing power structure doesn't want to enrich. (I have a separate theory that the current anti-Musk backlash is engineered because of an accidental failure of the system implementing this longstanding policy, due to the double whammy of unexpected breakout success of both Tesla stock and SpaceX operational scaling simultaneously. He sure is lucky he has a US passport whilst trying to do what he's doing.)
People like to ascribe this to "late stage capitalism" but for every dysfunctional industry lacking real competition or consumer choice, I can point to a bad set of laws or regulations paid for by that industry. It's a failure of the state to do its job to protect end users and opportunity and liberty.
When copyright was about to expire, Disney went to the legislature with checkbook in hand. Laws are for sale in the USA.
Why does the illusion of consumer choice become more and more farcical every year?
The US regulatory machine is totally corrupt in almost everything it touches. We just reclassified it so it seems less shady than it is, but the story of Comcast and the FCC stands clear as just one of many illustrations.
(Or Bell in Canada, or DTAG in Germany. It works the same everywhere.)
> Why do you think there are so few major retailers in the US? Media companies? ISPs? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Health care networks? Pharmacies? Pharmaceutical companies? Grocery stores? Food manufacturers? Major entertainment media franchises? Entertainment venues?
Because free markets don't actually stop the accumulation of private market power. The natural state of most markets is monopoly or oligopoly due to efficiencies of scale and collusion. Governments at least provide some degree of legal oversight to this private power.
None of the industries I listed are operating in a free market, so I am not sure why you brought that concept up as a scapegoat.
All of the large incumbents in those industries in western countries are protected by laws paid for, engineered, and often literally written by those industries. Places where this is not the case are the exception, not the rule.
This is a conjecture held as axiomatic by some economists and not by others. There's no strong evidence for it and there's been a lack of opportunities to observe natural experiments (we have not seen advanced economies exist outside the scope of interventionist states). But there's plenty of examples of private economic power tending toward concentration (cartels, etc.) when permitted.
The corruption in western nations is more sophisticated, and is better at hiding in plain sight. The type in the east is more furtive, probably out of an effort to "save face".
They differ in style, but not degree.
Over here we call it special euphemisms like "lobbying" and "regulatory capture" instead of "bribery" and "kickbacks". It makes people regard it differently, giving it an air of respectability.
Given the size of the corruption industry in the US, this was inevitable, as it would need a surface level of legitimacy to be able to attract and employ the sheer numbers of people who operate the machinery of the flows of bribery money from industry to servile lawmakers.
Why do you think there are so few major retailers in the US? Media companies? ISPs? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Health care networks? Pharmacies? Pharmaceutical companies? Grocery stores? Food manufacturers? Banks?
It's not lack of supply or lack of demand. Many people wish to manufacture cheap insulin or build better ISPs or more cheap surgery clinics or better grocery stores.
Soon it will be the same with social networks. They already achieved it with app stores, which is the only meaningful publishing today, apps having killed the web.
Anything that has broad social appeal or need which subsequently results in large recurring cash flows will get regulated upon so that the cash doesn't flow to anyone the existing power structure doesn't want to enrich. (I have a separate theory that the current anti-Musk backlash is engineered because of an accidental failure of the system implementing this longstanding policy, due to the double whammy of unexpected breakout success of both Tesla stock and SpaceX operational scaling simultaneously. He sure is lucky he has a US passport whilst trying to do what he's doing.)
People like to ascribe this to "late stage capitalism" but for every dysfunctional industry lacking real competition or consumer choice, I can point to a bad set of laws or regulations paid for by that industry. It's a failure of the state to do its job to protect end users and opportunity and liberty.
When copyright was about to expire, Disney went to the legislature with checkbook in hand. Laws are for sale in the USA.
Why does the illusion of consumer choice become more and more farcical every year?
The US regulatory machine is totally corrupt in almost everything it touches. We just reclassified it so it seems less shady than it is, but the story of Comcast and the FCC stands clear as just one of many illustrations.
(Or Bell in Canada, or DTAG in Germany. It works the same everywhere.)