"financialization" is more a boogieman than a solid concept. More competition (the best interpretation of "de-financialization" I can imagine) is not very solid solution for something like healthcare (or yes pet care) where the demand being inelastic makes "ransoming" easy.
> best interpretation of "de-financialization" I can imagine
"Financialization" means the insistence on seeing "business" as a machine which is to be optimized to maximize return on money. It's in contrast to people doing good work for a fair price.
Compare these two veterinary practices.
One has an owner who is a vet, who got into the practice because they love animals. They hire staff who love animals. They charge enough money to live reasonably comfortable lives and pay off their vet school bills. They could charge more but they don't. They don't try to push unnecessary services to raise more money.
The second is owned by private equity, who got into the field because it has inelastic demand. Prices are carefully calibrated to extract the maximum amount of cash possible. They hire staff who focus on getting the most bang for the buck: they focus and push for expensive operations and do them in the shortest amount of time; operations which aren't cost-effective are passed over or simply not done. At every step of the road, "upselling" is a thing, to maximize money taken from pockets.
The first is what I consider the best kind of "business": Doing good fork for a fair price. Those kinds of businesses make the world a better place to live in.
The second is what I would call "financialization", and I consider the worst kind of business: Extracting as much money as possible for the least effort. Those kinds of businesses make the world a terrible place to live in.
The first kind of business is the kind of capitalism I want, not the second.
and in the case of the insignificant minority, the second one sets up a competing shop directly across the street with artificially low prices and waits for the first one to go out of business.
It might make sense to split it into "professional services" v "business". Legally it's hard to tell them apart, but people tend to know the difference.
It makes sense for some businesses to actually be an "asset" - eg Coca Cola company. It is a reasonable argument that it doesn't make sense for a vet practice to be an "asset". Nor a law firm.
> The first kind of business is the kind of capitalism I want, not the second.
The problem is there's no rule you can apply that distinguished between those two, in a court of law or elsewhere. Unless you just look at if a bigger firm owns the vet office. But that doesn't help with the upselling vet or the large national organization who wants to help animals.
More like, could than can as far as I can see. Markets kick ass under certain circumstances, but in some areas it's almost impossibly hard to achieve those circumstances.
the problem is that some markets inherently can't have adequate information because the customers by nature of being customers don't have time to shop around.
Doubtful. The point of capitalism is to optimize for maximum capital production. Ergo, the optimum solution always seems to end up being financialization, since it is so effective at producing capital.
