It’s a game of monopoly and we’re all losing.
✨capitalism✨
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We should have our wealthy play hungry hungry hippos. As in we toss them into a marsh with 4 hungry hippos.
If you’re playing monopoly, isn’t everyone a loser? 😝
Nice.
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.
Which is what the game of monopoly was designed to teach.
in Canada we play Poleconomy.
Oligopoly actually.
Oh no, it’s not a monopoly. It’s an oligopoly. It’s like exactly the same except it’s completely legal.
My dad said I already own Park Place so whatever dice you roll is whatever
If Sobey’s wants to fix prices high, they have to make exactly two phonecalls before they do it. Totally different. /s
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.
Gallon Westin was also in TV commercials. It’s not hard to put yourself in TV commercials.
If he could get away with it, he’d rename is Peasant’s Choice.
Oh wait. He probably can get away with it.
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.
Me, constantly telling my dad he doesn’t need to spend $300 a month to be brainwashed by mainstream media lmao
Just brainwash yourself on YouTube 🤷🏼♂️
Is satellite TV not a thing in America?
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.
It’s a thing, it’s just run by the same companies, so you’re stuck with them either way.
Are you saying you have to pay those companies for access to satellite TV? In Germany it’s completely free, except for the cost of buying and setting up a satellite dish of course.
And ISPs here aren’t exclusively cable TV companies. Internet over coax cable does exist, but since there is competition from DSL and Fiber ISPs it’s actually priced very competivitely
I don’t know of any satellite company in the U.S. that does free service, used to be able to hijack a signal back in the day with some sketchy equipment but that’s basically not a common thing anymore. We do have free broadcasting with a digital receiver they switched over from analog a little over a decade ago (info). At the time they gave out free receivers since most tv’s weren’t compatible so a lot of people just never made the switch. Real shame too because they added a lot of channels with the change and I thoroughly enjoyed the upgrade (each channel got sub-channels as well so there was a lot more airing/to choose from).
where is it a thing? I remember back in the 90’s it was a thing upper class people used to do.
It’s very common here in Germany
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).
Didn’t a Telus exec confirm this publicly? It’s a little more than a theory.
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
They compete on prices just like the grocery stores competed on bread prices
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.
Worst zoltron villain ever.
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
That’s the Irving family of the maritimes.
Bit of a stretch to say they’re rivals.
Then you got neat little fiefdoms too, like Irvingland - whoops, I mean New Brunswick.
Probably wanna delete this before the Irvings put a hit out on you
Long live Sasktel.
Until Bell decides to snuff it out. They’ll use their “legal” division (aka the CRTC) to outlaw it and no-one will squawk about it because: if you control the media, you control ‘the people’s’ voice. We live in the shittiest timeline.
Lol. It’s a crown corporation and WILDLY popular. No one will squawk? Any party would not withstanding that shit immediately because it’s popular, and then just wrap it in their party-specific words.
The LAST thing Bell wants is to draw national attention to how well a provincial offering is. The LAST thing they want is for people to see that there are alternative structures that are working for other Canadians.
I’m sure the conservatives will continue trying to figure out a way to push it to withering and crumbling… they definitely tried to sell off/privatize chunks of them in the past but the level of outrage they were met with has put those ideas to bed for the time being
It’s a tough fight for them because of how familiar the population is with those corps.
Lab services in Sask have bounced between private and public several times… Nobody really notices (which is sad IMO)
But SGI and SaskTel… Everyone is a client, and everyone can look over any provincial border and go “whoa, don’t wanna end up like them”.
“This part of the Crown corporation is profitable on its own, we should sell it off!”
“Why are we spending so much money to subsidize this Crown corporation!? We should sell it off!”
And then bell asks us why we’re depressed.
when you try the American experiment in a country with the population of California
sorry about that by the way
Hey, we have checks and balances in place.
The Senate is occupied by two railroads.
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Hey now… let’s not forget AirCanada.
And the banks, and the oil companies.
We also have a senate, consisting of appointed large dairy farmers.
In Australia it’s 2 supermarkets and 4 banks.
4 separate companies in one sector
Cannot relate.
And a haunted skeleton masquerading as a media mogul.
A horny haunted skeleton with an engagement fetish
In New Zealand it’s the same, and 5 of those 6 are Australian.
And a coffee shop which is widely loved but functionally is just a powerless figurehead.
Burger King’s Canada Coffeehouse
Not Canadian… yet. How close I am to citizenship?
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Rogers
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???
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Lobslaw
Lobslaw 🤣🤔🤣🤔🤣
I’m keeping that one.
I suppose that’s one point against citizenship lol
There are actually three major telecom companies making up 85%+ of the market share: Bell, Rogers, and Telus. Don’t be fooled by names like Virgin, Fido, and Koodo, as those are just the “lite” subsidiaries of the three major companies respectively.
For supermarkets there is Loblaws, as you said. But, it’s not like Sobeys and Metro are much better, they just keep their robber-baron executives better hidden.
Sobeys and Metro are literally the exact same shit. The whole boycott thing was so stupid, they played us like a fiddle.
Huh, I almost guessed Telus. Is Bell more of an east coast thing?
Bell is the second largest in Canada in number of suscribers.
Bell was available in Nova Scotia when I lived there. It’s also in Ontario. I can’t speak for other provinces.
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