Mastodawn

Emeritus Prof Christopher May

Economists will tell you that price caps stop markets working properly... which is all very well, but when we can see that market society is not working well for the majority of the population, some focussed policy of price caps looks increasingly politically expedient (not least of all as there are all sorts of examples of prices caps not causing the economic sky to fall in).

Markets can be modified, have been modified and should be!

#economics #PriceControls

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/27/governments-controlling-prices-inevitable-mexico-spain-cost-of-living

Governments controlling prices? It has long been unthinkable – but may now be inevitable

In Mexico and Spain, leaders who have capped public costs have been rewarded at the ballot box. As another cost of living surge arrives, it may be a policy our leaders are unable to resist, says Guardian columnist Andy Beckett

The Guardian

Codewizard 10h ago

@ChrisMayLA6 let's come down to the fundamental question......

What is a market ??🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 9h ago

Ha ha, used to do a whole hour long lecture on that in my economics for non-economists course.... not an easy Q. to answer

Codewizard 7h ago

@ChrisMayLA6 economics is a word that literally bleeds the human being. I belong to a country plundered by the British.

But my question is more fundamental : whatever lecture you've given on the market in the past, do those theories hold true today ???🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

It was an MNC that had come to lndia, and then eventually settled down to rule.

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 6h ago

Well, perhaps the key thing is that markets precede capitalism but have always needed to be organised through political/social power of one sort or another.... theories of markets hold true to the extent that they are grounded in how markets are actually structured not how they appear to be structured in the economists mythical modelled world.

As to MNCs & their role in India, markets may have been invoked but the real issue (as always) was/is political power.

Codewizard 5h ago

@ChrisMayLA6 from what you say, l understand that markets have been structured by (invisible) "political powers".

And the US aggression of lran is one such force at work !!

If we could be friends, and you took care of my needs and l took care of yours, don't you think the world would have been a better place ??🤓🤓🤓🤓

Then Pentagon wouldn't have required to send bomber aircrafts and aircraft carriers to lran, and there wouldn't have been this sudden crisis in cooking fuels ??😤😤😤😤😤

Who knows what exactly is happening ??🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵

The public is just being spoonfed stories 🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧

Codewizard 6h ago

@ChrisMayLA6 would you like to insinuate that non-economists absolutely have no clue about the market ??🤔🤔🤔

There are plenty of people in my country who can't even write their own name.

But it doesn't really matter today whether you're literate or illiterate. Your face would be recorded as your signature.

And the funniest thing is that people are gobbling up all this nonsense by the administration with a huge amount of zeal.

@ChrisMayLA6 Obviously, the previous control for prices was competition but given the regulators everywhere appear to have turned a blind eye to the myriad of mergers, acquisitions and mega-mergers ...

We have a system of monopolies everywhere, hiding in plain sight through sub-brands and partnerships etc.

Once monopolies are in place, there path is clear.

#hattip to @pluralistic and his book Enshittification.

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 9h ago

@Fishd @pluralistic

The UK's bigger problems is tacit 'cooperation' in oligopolistic markets - the appearance of competition but none of the assumed advantages... economists are often much too relaxed about markets controlled by oligopolistic clusters

JimmyB (he/him)10h ago

@ChrisMayLA6 it’s weird that so many believe that markets are ever ‘free’. They never are: whoever is able to manipulate the market, always does to their advantage. So the idea that Government is illegitimate in that game is only because sometimes they act in the people’s interests, to the direct discomfort of corporates who want it all their own way.

And yet the prevailing narrative….

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 9h ago

Markets are by their very character subject to & facilitated by law, provided by the state - there is no such thing as a free market, only levels o (and varying intent) of regulation

@ChrisMayLA6 The definition of “markets working well” seems somewhat nebulous. Which to my naive mind seems inevitable. The point about an auction is that one party is under pressure to pay more than they want and the other to accept less. In theory that should lead to compromise, but in reality things are different. One party may not be acting rationally or have different leverage.

@ChrisMayLA6 I just remembered. A number of companies, including one my dad worked for, the bosses refused to reduce margin on the product, to potentially achieve massively greater sales and total profits. Because they believed that selling 10000 items with £1 margin rather than 1000 with £2 was being robbed. (“That coat is worth £14 I’m not selling it for £13”) Also, in the 70s US computer industry subsidised sales to UK to kickstart sales but UK sellers pocketed the $ and kept prices high.

MikeStok 6h ago

@ChrisMayLA6 Which should I place more trust in: my horoscope or an economist’s speculation?

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 5h ago

Equally flawed, if for different reasons

I'm always amazed that exponents of free markets claim when they fail to produce expected outcomes for customers, say like the water industry, it's because they aren't regulated enough! You can't have it both ways!

Emeritus Prof Christopher May 3h ago

They also often suggest that the problem is the market was set up in the wrong way, thereby immediately admitting that markets are not a natural phenomenon but rather a product of regulatory structures