Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hcurtiss 31 days ago
There absolutely are monopolies. There are, in fact, many state run enterprises. Where do you get these ideas?
3 comments

My understanding is that the Chinese government prefers to have multiple successful companies in each field and they don't like it when one company becomes too powerful.
They pivoted away from that quite a while ago now they just disappear people for a week or two and randomly completely crush a business here and there to make sure they understand their place.
So also does the US. Trump had prominent cases against Google and Meta. Biden against Apple and Amazon. Prominent efforts on airlines and grocery stores. Honestly, I'm pretty sure the US and Chinese antitrust laws are pretty similar (theirs largely crafted after ours).
State run is better than a private for profit monopoly or few-o-poly which is what we get.

People all over the world have often revolted to get some enterprises state run (nationalizing) and were often punished or even bombed for it.

State run (or heavily regulated) services around here in Eastern Europe: health care, education and housing. All incredibly bad and expensive, I pay huge chunks of my monthly salary for them and I try to avoid them at all costs. They get worse and more expensive with time too.

All the other services and products I use in my life, from the car I drive to the clothes on my back, the food I eat and the device I write this on are provided by private enterprise and they have become much better and cheaper in my life time.

Health care, education and housing have been getting worse and more expensive in the US over the decade also. Must be all that nationalization.
I can buy "more expensive", but as far as "worse", can you provide the relevant metrics?

I don't think that your chance of survival of a heart attack or lymphoma got worse since 2016.

If you can afford less (lesser treatment, drugs, procedures, quality of doctors and hospitals you can pay for), then your chances of survival also got WAY worse.

Doesn't matter if the 1% has now access to better versions.

Sure, if actual availability of healthcare to an average American has grown worse, that would be a bad result. But that is something you should demonstrate with data instead of just asserting it.
I don't have concrete metrics/sources to give right now, but my general perception from reading the news is that there's been staffing issues pushing healthcare systems in the US towards increasing workloads in individual providers, leading to less time/attention given to individual patients, lower availability of appointment slots, and offloading of patients onto alternative app-based telehealth platforms, which have been trending up alongside aquisition/consolidation of independent private practices.
Staffing problems are absolutely everywhere, regardless of the particular healthcare system or even political system. Czechia, the UK, China, Japan. It seems to be a global trend, much like falling birthrates.
> Must be all that nationalization.

No, it’s the regulations. In less regulated, freer markets like vision correction eye surgery the costs went down and quality up. Even in health care.

You mean in places where every random without a degree can perform eye surgery, and doesn't matter if one in 5 customers go blind from it? Yes, that sure drops the prices.

But they're way cheaper than the US in heavily and properly regulated health markets too.

You'll forgive me if perhaps I want something as important as eye surgery to be well regulated. Have a look at health outcomes for literally any industry where regulation is lax, like Brazilian plastic surgery. It's not great.
Sure, I totally get you. Then higher costs, lower availability and crappier services (all due to less competition and more bureaucratic hoops) is a price you should be happily willing to pay.
State-run all those things used to be way cheaper and better here than after privatization. So much more, it's not even funny.
But those are mostly companies who provide a public service, or am I wrong?