[lbo-talk] Delong puts the smackdown on ol' Whiskers

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Wed Apr 6 12:31:58 PDT 2005


On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:


> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>> Those profits do not come from
>> redistributing surplus created by other capitalist's
>> workers. They come from overcharging consumers.
>
> Which means that some other capitalist's sales are suffering, no?
>
> Doug

To follow Doug's thread a little: overcharging customers can't lead to overall economic growth, because the cost just becomes an excessive liability for some other business. It's a wash.

Simple example: Economy consists of businesses A and B. If A engages in trickery and price gouging, B takes the loss when it buys stuff from A, or it retaliates. In any case, the profit generated by the system as a whole due to price gouging is zero.

Miles



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list