It’s a game of monopoly and we’re all losing.
What blows my mind 🤯
The landlords game has two different sets of rules you could play with. One set of rules was basically the same as the Monopoly we know today. When the game ends when one player acquires ownership of everything and bankrupts everyone else.
The other set of rules, called “prosperity”, involved a tax that redistributed wealth. The game ends when all players have doubled their original stake and everyone wins.
The game was intended to show how unbridled capitalism ultimately leads to a few billionaires owning everything and everyone else being poor/bankrupt. (Sound familiar?)
And compared it to the prosperity rules which were based on Georgism, a kind of socialism/capitalism hybrid that both rewards people for the value they produce while also creating surplus public revenue that can be used to create social safety nets.
in Canada we play Poleconomy.
Oh no, it’s not a monopoly. It’s an oligopoly. It’s like exactly the same except it’s completely legal.
oligopoly.
Here’s the thing. Imagine you are at Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Leave the lot and take a walk through Johnny Carson Park. Now you’re in NBC Burbank Studios. Keep going and you’ll find yourself in Warner Brother’s Studios. On the other side of the Lakeside Golf Club is Universal Studios. A few months ago the CEOs of these studios were regularly meeting to discuss what they were going to offer the writer’s and actor’s unions. These CEOs are all supposed to hate each other but now they are like buddies. Seriously, a couple of weeks ago Warner Brother’s and Disney announced “The streaming bundle of Hulu, Max and Disney+ is hitting the market today at the price of $16.99 a month with advertising and $29.99 without.” Kevin Feige said in an interview recently “if people go to the movie theater and see one of their movies and it has a trailer for one of our movies then that’s good for us.”
Oh and here’s another data point.
“On January 14, 2020, Universal and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced that they would partner on a 10-year multinational joint-venture. In North America, their physical distribution operations were merged into a company named Studio Distribution Services, LLC.”
Fuckin Loblaws selling " Presidents Choice" food in a country with no President. Except the President of Loblaws … Basically the coup already happened.
Historically, the name came from Dave Nichol, who was president of the company for decades. He actually had a very strong hand in the selection of products that were included in the product line.
Apparently all kinds of people would pitch product ideas at him, and would taste test them and pick only ones he liked. The idea of “President’s Choice” wasn’t to be cheapo no name products, but unique and distinctive stuff personally picked by the company’s president.
And Dave wasn’t just some guy in the corner office. In his prime he was a Canadian personality, and you saw him in TV commercials. Once he left Loblaws in the '90s the President’s Choice stuff lost its panache and meaning.
I heard a theory years ago, that the cellphone companies divided Canada up. Each company gets to be market leader in their region.
Sounds very anti-competitive to me.
That’s exactly how cable works in the States, you only have one real choice depending on where you live. If you try and cancel over their atrocious service there’s a very real chance they’ll ask what other choices you think you have.
All the smart cable companies make most of their revenue from cable internet now; what remains of cable TV is propped up by a minority of older people who refuse to get with the times or relatively well-off folks who just don’t care.
It’s a thing, it’s just run by the same companies, so you’re stuck with them either way.
Plus, with everything moving to streaming, satellite TV just isn’t as relevant. You end up dealing with the same cable companies for internet regardless.
where is it a thing? I remember back in the 90’s it was a thing upper class people used to do.
Susan Crawford wrote on and talked about this (mis)handling of telecoms in the US context years ago, the government letting the companies divide regions up and ensure a lack of competition.
My reading of the situation in Canada for internet and wireless is that it was a historical mix of:
- lacking political will/interest to govern from day one
- a policy of letting the free market run until it’s a major problem
- follow the US lead for anything new
- and support the (then) recently de-regulated incumbent (Bell) to dominate
- give competitive advantages to Canadian companies vs allowing foreign competition even if it means worse outcomes for Canadian consumers (better to protect the Canadian economy from foreign interests than to ensure consumer best interests).
I don’t know about elsewhere in Canada, but here, Bell and Rogers compete directly in the mobile space, and Bell competes directly with cable, and all of those options have multiple resellers at half the price, thanks to CRTC.
Are the prices the lowest in the world? No. Can you tell a company to fuck off? Yes, you can.
I don’t know. The Canada described by OP might be a foreign land compared to the part of Canada I know.
The prices are the same. “Competition” vs the lesser of two evils. Whatever fantasy you’re living in we’re being gouged left right and centre
https://dailyhive.com/canada/canada-industry-minister-slams-rogers-bell-price-hikes
I always heard “Canada is three mining companies standing on eachother’s shoulders in a trechcoat.”
Although that one applies equally to Australia.
It is more like an oil company, a mining company, and a logging company all on each others shoulders in a trenchcoat
and two cell phone companies hanging off the torso pretending they are arms … and a big giant dong of a grocery store hanging off the groin.
Australia has three mobile phone networks, so presumably in a different trenchcoat
But really in Australia the power is in the mining and fossil fuel industry, and especially in coal which is both.
One party wanted a carbon tax which would hurt mining (though less now than then as they have switched to electric everything due to reduced cost of solar and batteries) and fossil fuels and the press and television media went hard against that party and it’s leader (who was thoroughly vilified), causing our worst ever parliament to be elected at the next election
