Mechanically, not upgraded, no. But it was an empty van with an aluminium roof rack when I bought it, and I did the fitout myself. Awning, solar panels, batteries, inverter, fridge, shower, ventillation etc.

argument when there’s obviously a set of shared motives driving labor costs down while at the same time pushing up profit margins.

Well, just because they have shared motives doesn’t mean they’re going to act in concert with each other. They’re competitors. One’s market share loss is another’s market share gain.

The fact that profit margins are up does a lot of damage to the ‘it can’t be greedflation’ theory

It might help to clarify what “it” we’re talking about here, or for that matter, what exactly we’re referring to with “greedflation”. To be totally clear, companies will raise prices when the market will bear it, and when they have a monopoly or cartel, that can be nearly indefinitely. The thing I’m objecting to in the first place here is the notion that that’s just universally the case across the entire economy, which strikes me as ridiculous and a way for the government/central bank to deflect blame for monetary inflation. And to your point - for any highly competitive market, it’s a very elaborate explanation versus just that supply and demand has caused prices to increase because the supply of money has gone up, which is a very simple and fundamental phenomenon in econ. As a rule of thumb, the more diversified the market is, the less likely that is to be the case.

We did see a big supply shock when Russia partially cut out of the global energy market, causing the market to chase after oil from the remaining producers, causing an increase in price. That’s not some new phenomenon, that is also just basic supply and demand. It does cause price shocks, even if their costs didn’t go up, even if labor didn’t see the benefit. That’s not, however, some permanent state of “inflation” like monetary inflation which is just never reversed for the entire remaining lifetime of a currency - supply shocks are transient (at least until the fossil fuels actually run out).

Yup, well aware how much monopolization there is.

Here’s corporations in the US by market cap:

https://companiesmarketcap.com/usa/largest-companies-in-the-usa-by-market-cap/

Keep in mind we’re not talking about simply “6 companies dominate a single industry”. The burden of proof for “greedflation” is simultaneous price-fixing behavior across the entire economy. Across essentially all corporations.

I’m sorry you’re under the impression that the economy is controlled equally by tens of thousands of corporations. Its much more like 2 dozen control nearly all money that presently exists.

There are 8 million businesses in the U.S. We have problems with monopolization, but to the level where a cross-economy price fixing scheme could possibly be implemented, we are not at that point. That’s an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof, not something to just believe dogmatically because you don’t like capitalism.

I also have no fucking clue what you mean when you say that not fixing prices is in their best interests??

You could start by just asking me. This is basic game theory. Market price of a good is 10 dollars, ACME and BLLC corp meet and fix prices at 15 dollars. ACME corp goes to market at 15 dollars, BLLC corp goes against the secret agreement and goes to market at 10 dollars. BLLC gets ACME corp’s customers as long as they retain their price at 15. Now take the same example and spread it across hundreds, thousands of companies, keeping in mind that this level of coordination would leave behind proof, witnesses, and take an extraordinary level of coordination. Non-participation in a price fixing cartel for a minority company could mean capturing the entire market, and anyone who was participating would immediately be incentivized to exit it.

This is what is being posited, versus the dirt simple explanation that more money has been printed and has thus decreased in value. And we know a ton of money was printed.

Price-fixing cartels aren’t impossible, however, they do become completely impossible to create or maintain at a scale like that. There is simply way too much competition. It’s an extremely elaborate, poorly substantiated theory to explain something there’s an obvious, well-substantiated explanation for already. I don’t know how you guys think about applying the scientific method, but to me, that ain’t it.

Your previous comment was basically a massive industry wide conspiracy theory though, so their response of a more sensible answer to give you something a bit more concrete to go on was pretty reasonable to me.

You believe whatever you want. Can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink.