Question for Doug

Dennis Breslin dbreslin at ctol.net
Tue Feb 20 08:27:29 PST 2001


Interesting question that has vexed me til my dissertation collapsed from the dry-rot. I've always thought relationships among the various parties to urban development schemes created the appearance of an urban land market, even a speculative one, but that the underlying reality would reveal far more systemic links and networks among lenders, developers, construction companies, etc. Less David Harvey and more Joe Feagin. Anyway, here's some thoughts...

A captive market seems different from something controlled. The former involves a lack of alternatives for players - buyers or whathaveyou. College students are captive consumers for the textbook industry - forced purchases for high priced commodities.

If you blend a little psuedo-quasi-sorta-institutionalisism with a more or less mainstream econ approach seasoned lightly with a pinch of marxism, one can conceputalize markets as administered thingies - games where one set of players - business firms - seek to exert ever greater control over the conditions of the exchange. And make gobs of money, too!

The rehash is familiar: Mergers and acquisitions form larger entities that direct production and investment at the same time winnowing competition. Price competition dissolves into price leaders and product differentiation. The whole play of corporate/monopoly capitalism tends toward greater organizational control - within firms, in the relationships between suppliers and producers, in the relationships between firms, in the relationships between unions and management, in the relationships between consumers and producers, in the relationships between business and the the state. Industries that become oligopolistic foster a more organized market, less price/cost volatility and far greater certainty in resource supplies and demand. And so it goes. Illegal executive collusion, the illegal and not so webs of interlocking directorates, and industry associations facilitate control and order. Lobbying government with money and knowledge guides a stabilizing regulatory apparatus. In the end, the development of the corporate form has continually worked to buffer, reduce, eliminate much of the uncertainty and risk intrinsic to market competition. And the resulting exchanges have not so much a fixed but a highly managed or massaged quality.

D. Breslin

Dennis wrote:
>
> Or anyone else. Is there such a thing as a "fixed" market? I don't mean
> fixed in a corrupt sense (like "fixing" a fight), but in a controlled sense.
> The same as captive market, I suppose I mean.
>
> DP



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