Lenin in Essen

Dennis Robert Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Sat Feb 10 12:10:47 PST 2001


On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, John Mage wrote:


> industrial did they mean "manufacturing"? And just how much more
> concentrated could aircraft, tires, petroleum refining, soap and other
> detergents, etc. get?

The thing is, none of those industries operate even remotely like the vertically-integrated giants of yore, where one firm dug iron ore, smelted steel, and assembled cars, all at once. Airbus and Boeing sit on top of vast global supplier networks, some of which are multibillion dollar firms themselves; tens of thousands of firms produce the parts which go into cars; computers are made the same way. Even Microsoft and Intel make up less than 15% of the software and CPU biz, for example, not even close to the glory days of the Rockefellers. Which isn't to say the market doesn't radically homogenize and flatten out human experience (all those TVs and cable channels and yet there's nothing on).

-- Dennis



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