ECONOMICS: Economics teaches that monopolies don’t last

Sunday, February 16, 2025

https://nypost.com/2025/02/07/business/investors-take-aim-at-nba-with-plans-to-create-5b-basketball-league/

Investors take aim at NBA with plans to create $5B basketball league: ‘Opportunity is massive’
By Reuters 
Published Feb. 7, 2025 Updated Feb. 7, 2025, 5:54 p.m. ET

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A group of investors are looking to create a new basketball league that will span Asia and Europe to one day rival the NBA, with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund as a strategic partner and Swiss bank UBS serving as an adviser.

The Financial Times reported that the $5 billion basketball competition plans to create six men’s teams and six women’s teams that will compete in eight host cities.

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​Interesting. The NBA is a “monopoly”. Economics teaches that monopolies don’t last since competition seeks to “eat their lunch”. Here’s real life proof of that economic ‘lesson”.

From Standard Oil on to every other attempt to corner the market, we see monopolies destroyed without Gooferment intervention almost immediately after they come into being.  Remember Standard Oil went from 100% market share to under 70% in a decade due to competition.  And, then the Gooferment got involved.

The only way you can have a monopoly today is with a Gooferment grant of immunity.  Like Baseball, the Post Office, or Amtrak.  And, it usually comes with subsidies (i.e., why does the Gooferment build NFL stadiums?) that return to the politicians and bureaucrats as payoffs (i.e., campaign contributions).

 In the end, the Taxpayers and the Customers get <synonym for the act of procreation>!

Argh!

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PEACE: Using a nuclear bomb should be unthinkable; Hibakusha’s peace prize should remind us of that

Saturday, October 19, 2024

https://nypost.com/2024/10/11/world-news/japans-nihon-hidankyo-wins-2024-nobel-peace-prize/?lctg=6080ba40747925275a09dcd3

Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins 2024 Nobel Peace Prize
By Reuters 
Published Oct. 11, 2024, 5:15 a.m. ET

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Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in a warning to countries who have nuclear weapons not to use them.

Witnesses to the only two nuclear bombs ever to be used in conflict, members of the group, also known as Hibakusha, have dedicated their lives to the struggle for a nuclear-free world.

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Using a nuclear bomb should be unthinkable.  But when in a war and you’re losing, suddenly the unthinkable becomes very thinkable.

The USA Gooferment should IMMEDIATELY tell Ukraine and Israel that they will no longer supply money and weapons for their wars.  

Russia, who much to my surprise, seems to be the “adult in the room” and has offered to negotiate peace.

Israel and the Arab world must come to the peace table.  And. Since the Gooferment loves twisting arms so much, let that become their number 1 priority.

Finally, NATO, which has long outlived its intended purpose, should shut down and give everyone a “peace dividend”.  

Dona Nobis Pacem

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RANT: Gooferment Motors bailout has cost over 32B$ dollars so far

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/10/24/not-news-uaw-considering-plan-milk-unemployment-system-if-it-calls-gm

Not News: UAW Considering Plan to Milk the Unemployment System If It Calls a GM Strike
By Tom Blumer | October 24, 2015 | 10:30 PM EDT

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The news coming out of Detroit about near-deadline negotiations between the United Auto Workers union and General Motors has been pretty quiet. As the Sunday 11:59 p.m. deadline approaches, the Associated Press only has a four-paragraph blurb indicating that the union wants to get a richer package than it just garnered in negotiations with Fiat Chrysler. A Reuters report goes into detail about GM’s cost structure still being higher than that seen at Toyota’s and Nissan’s U.S. plants by about 15 percent and 31 percent, respectively. The New York Times is only carrying reports from the wires.

One note of substance about the UAW’s strategy covered at Bloomberg News — surely known to others following the industry who are filing bland reports — is that it plans to milk the unemployment insurance system in the event of a protracted strike.

To be clear, such a strike would appear to be very unlikely, if for no other reason than the fact that Americans remember that the Obama administration bailed out GM at a considerable cost several years ago. The final fully-loaded cost involved was $26.5 billion — not the $11.2 billion touted by the press last year. It’s safe to say that quite a few people would not take kindly to the idea of the primary beneficiaries of that unprecedented largesse walking out on their jobs when so many others are still unemployed and under-employed over six years after the most recent recession’s official end.

(Additionally, the linked $26.5 billion analysis appears not to have picked up the effect of the government permitting GM to carry forward $16 billion in tax losses incurred by the “old GM” into the “new GM” — even though “a business that undergoes a change in ownership usually has to forfeit the old company’s net operating losses,” which certainly happened during the bailout. At the statutory federal income tax rate of 35 percent, that decision alone cost the U.S. treasury $5.6 billion.)

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Argh!

And the UAW isn’t happy?

Talk about Crony Capitalism.

Now they want to stick the taxpayer — via unemployment insurance — with the cost of their “strike”.

Guess no one remembers the current 18T+ national debt and the guesstimated 200T+ in unfunded liabilities that our posterity will have to deal with!

Argh!

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