A Boring Dystopia

It's been maddening to watch people call price-gouging "inflation", honestly.

That's not fucking inflation when someone in the supply chain made things more expensive and pocketed the difference as a wider profit margin; it's the symptom of non-enforcement of antitrust laws.

I mean, most foodstuffs markets (in the supply chain between farm and grocer or farm -> restaurant) are controlled by very few people or corporations; when the farmers get less for their products but the grocer must pay more for them, that's not inflation. It's price-gouging, the symptom of the kinds of market failures that follow regulatory failures to prevent corporate mergers that would reduce competition in those markets.

When you look at food, fuel, housing, the enshittification of basically everything, the acquisition of yesterday's hot-fresh-streaming services and re-packaging them to be just as predatory as the cable was when you cut the cord and went to streaming- it's all what we get when private equity owns a piece of everything and they're running it all to squeeze more out of everyone they can, and they also ensure regulators don't do a damned thing about it.

There was once a time when regulators had the will to block corporate mergers, and they had the will to tax windfall profits at 100%.