#Chile #Allende #SantiagoSchool #ChicagoSchool #Neoliberalism #Socialism: "The Santiago School owes its existence to the fact that the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal) is headquartered in the Chilean capital. For the first few decades after its launch in 1948, this institution challenged the mainstream account of free trade – and technology’s role in it – which has been espoused by economists in Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Imagine a richer country selling cars to a poorer one, which, in turn, reciprocates with bananas. As the two specialise and introduce technological innovations, prices of both commodities fall. Everyone is happy; progress marches ahead.

The Cepal economists disagreed with this rosy prediction, arguing that, over time, the developed countries tend to come out stronger from such trades. First, technological innovation benefits the car manufacturers more than it helps the banana growers; you can’t 3D-print tropical fruit. Second, rich countries that typically produce more advanced goods also have powerful trade unions, who, in defending the interests of their workers, also prevent the prices of cars from adjusting as swiftly as those of bananas."

https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-essay/2023/09/salvador-allende-fight-big-tech

Predatory pricing used to be illegal, but #ChicagoSchool #economists convinced judges to stop enforcing the law on the grounds that predatory pricing was *impossible* because no rational actor would choose to lose money. They (willfully) ignored the obvious possibility that a #VC fund could invest in a money-losing business and use predatory pricing to convince retail investors that a pile of shit of sufficient size *must* have a pony under it somewhere.

4/

"The point is that the entire model deployed by VCs is to profit by disrupting the marketplace with predatory pricing, and leave the losses to the suckers who buy into the IPO."

https://www.businessinsider.com/venture-capital-big-tech-antitrust-predatory-pricing-uber-wework-bird-2023-7

#tech #siliconvalley #chicagoschool #capitalism #VC #VentureCapital #uber

Despite my arguments with @delong, this is pretty good
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/why-do-economists-ignore-the-greatest-1d7
#economics #chicagoschool #inequality

#Economy #Economics #Monopolies #PredactoryPricing #ChicagoSchool #VenturePredator: "These models of successful predation are decades old, and have broad acceptance within economics – outside of Chicago-style ideologues – but they've yet to make much of a dent in minds of the judges who hear Predatory Pricing cases.

While judges continue to hit the snooze-bar on any awakening to this phenomenon, a new kind of predator has emerged, using a new kind of predation: the Venture Predator, a predatory company backed by venture capital funds, who make lots of high-risk bets they must cash out in ten years or less, ideally for a 100x+ return.

Writing in the Journal of Corporation Law Matthew Wansley and Samuel Weinstein – both of the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University – lay out a theory of Venture Predation in clear, irrefutable language, using it to explain the recent bubble we sometimes call the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy:"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/

They said it couldn't happen. After decades of #antitrust enforcement against #PredatoryPricing - selling goods below cost to kill existing competitors and prevent new ones from arising - the #ChicagoSchool of neoliberal #economists "proved" that predatory pricing didn't exist and that the courts could stand down and stop busting companies for it.

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That leads to votes for politicians who are willing to tax rich people. Thus do we find ourselves on #TheRoadToSerfdom:

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

Other realists go even further, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with orthodox (#ChicagoSchool) economists shouldn't be allowed to vote: "[a]nyone who opposes surge pricing should be disenfranchised. That’s how we should decide who decides in epistocracy."

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#Economics #Economism #Neoliberalism #ChicagoSchool: "Economism's core method is reducing human interaction to "incentives," to the exclusion of morals or ethics – think of Margaret Thatcher's insistence that "there is no such thing as society." Economism reduces its subjects to homo economicus, a "rational," "utility-maximizing" automaton responding robotically to its "perfect information" about the market.

Economism also insists that power has no place in predictions about how policies will play out. This is how the Chicago School economists were able to praise monopolies as "efficient" systems for maximizing "consumer welfare" by lowering prices without "wasteful competition."

This pretense of mathematical perfection through monopoly ignores the problem that anti-monopoly laws seek to address, namely, the corrupting influence of monopolists, who wield power to control markets and legislatures alike. As Sen John Sherman famously said in arguing for the Sherman Act: "If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life.""
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

Economism also insists that *power* has no place in predictions about how policies will play out. This is how the #ChicagoSchool economists were able to praise #monopolies as "efficient" systems for maximizing "#ConsumerWelfare" by lowering prices without "wasteful competition."

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Friedman's orthodoxy - #monetarism - has reigned supreme for decades, which is ironic, given that Friedman and his colleagues at the #ChicagoSchool of Economics claimed that they had elevated economics into an empirical, quantitative science, a kind of physics of human action, not like those squishy, #SocialSciences.

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But even though the incipiency standard remains on the books, its enforcement dwindled away to nothing, starting in the #Reagan era, thanks to the #ChicagoSchool's influence. The neoliberal economists of Chicago, led by the Nixonite criminal #RobertBork, counseled that most monopolies were "efficient" and the inefficient ones would self-correct when new businesses challenged them, and demanded a halt to antitrust enforcement.

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A recent writing by #NaomkKlein reminded me of this remark by Amitov Ghosh.
' #Oil, in this context, is the symbol of the #extractivist mindset: not only a perceived God-given right to keep extracting #FossilFuels, but also the right to keep taking whatever they want, leave poison behind, and never look back.'
I've been re-reading parts of #ShockDoctrine to how #Putin arose from #ChicagoSchool polices, #GeorgeSoros and #HarvardAcademics lke #Sachs
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/01/war-climate-crisis-putin-trump-oil-gas/