[joz1-k]

The reason governments no longer fight huge corporations or even clear monopolies is also due to heavy globalization. If one government destroys a monopoly (a global mega-corporation) in its country, it may strengthen the monopoly (and the global mega-corporation) in another country. So the line of thinking is, "We don't like this nasty monopoly, but at least it's our monopoly."

[SchemaLoad]

I don't really buy this. The government still has the ability to just ban or tax the foreign monopoly. And seemingly the EU has the ability to fine foreign businesses for being monopolies too.

China being a good example. Google being a monopoly in the rest of the world doesn't really impact them much since they just block the foreign products.

[joz1-k]

> the EU has the ability to fine foreign businesses for being monopolies too.

Specifically, the EU has no ability to fight foreign monopolies. Though, it has an ability to fine them and extort some pocket money from them. However, this hasn't had a tangible effect on creating more competition in those markets.

[xyzzy123]

Then people accuse you of being "protectionist" or "mercantilist". Your companies aren't internationally competitive. This cripples your exports unless you can convince other countries to also block the goods that are undercutting you.

[neves]

I thought it was Super PAC that rigged American democracy. Now China is the more efficient economy since their companies are must obey the State.

[at_compile_time]

We must be working from different definitions of efficient.

Yes, the CCP can say jump and expect their corporations to do so, but when everyone in a modern economy jumps at the same time, massive oversupply is the result. More market-based economies are also prone to similar overproduction when everyone gets caught up in the same mania (see AI datacenters), but investors will eventually stop lighting their money on fire when it becomes clear that the returns aren't there. Chinese companies, on the other hand, will just keep jumping until the CCP decides that they are done jumping.

Our feedback loop is geared towards only doing things that provide a return on investment. Their feedback loop has things like social stability and global competitiveness as competing goals to actually doing productive work.

Yes, they are able to accomplish a tremendous amount when they set their minds to it, but doing a tremendous amount more of something than there is actual demand is waste, the opposite of efficiency.

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/china-is-sending-its-...

[jfengel]

China is efficient but largely because they don't actually have to obey the State. They are capitalist; they compete in the global market and follow market signals.

The CCP does put a heavy thumb on some scales, but so does every country. Perfect efficiency is not optimal when circumstances change, so states always enforce some redundancy.

There are many differences, of course, but just don't get the idea that China consists of monopolies in a command economy. They call it "capitalism with Chinese characteristics."

[mym1990]

Any source for this? My hunch is that there is so much money sloshing around that government interests are easily swayed and conflicts of interest are relatively common now.

[joz1-k]

What would be an acceptable source for you? Which was the last US mega-corporation that the US government broke up? It certainly wasn't Microsoft or Google. Allowing huge companies to grow even bigger gives them more competitive power in the global market. This wasn't as important before we had super-globalized economies.