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by coliveira 2647 days ago
Following your reasoning, we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... In other words, lets kill the competitiveness of the local economy, so that other countries won't be able to do just that. This is similar to the soldier who decides to commit suicide so that the foreign army won't have the chance to do so!
2 comments
creato 2647 days ago
You have a point. I'm just pointing out the argument you responded to is not a fallacy, it's a real concern as well. I honestly don't know what I would do if I had decision making power on this issue.

> we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries...

This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them. In part, precisely because most of their competition is fragmented and paralyzed by infighting.

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coliveira 2647 days ago
> This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them.

if that is the case, then the US has no grounds on requesting the Chinese to open their markets for US firms! If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies, we should not be surprised if the Chinese create their own mega companies and close their market to the American ones.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that if we go the path of supporting mega companies, then we should just throw away the illusion of free market and understand that other countries will do the same, because they're not stupid.

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creato 2647 days ago
> If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies,

I think this is a silly strawman and you probably know it. This argument exists on a wide spectrum, at one end is "not acting to break up large companies", and at the other is "outright state owned enterprises with unlimited funding to compete abroad". The fact that the argument applies to both does not make them the same.

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coliveira 2646 days ago
It is not a strawman when we're talking about the US trying to "protect" giant and unhinged companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, ExonMobil, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. In fact what happens is the opposite, these companies are in large part controlling the country, which puts us in a similar situation as the Chinese.
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ethbro 2647 days ago
I believe you just described South Korea.
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