I had a thought a few days ago, concerning alternatives to price fixing. (as a means to prevent the "pass the buck" inflation cycle, specifically as a UBI is concerned)
Consider: The federal government enters EVERY consumer market, for essential products, with an overt goal of gaining NO MORE than 30% market share. 70% of the market remains in the hands of private enterprises, and they operate exactly the same way they do now.
However, the federally owned production system sets a price point that forces the transaction calculus lower than what private enterprise wants.
See for instance-- The price of insulin. Marked up thousands of percent. It does NOT cost that much to produce, nor to distribute. The prices are high, because people have to have it, or they literally die. This causes it to have a naturally high demand, and high demand -> High price.
If the Fed owned 30% of pharmaceutical production, they could set the product they produce in the "Easily affordable, but still profitable" range, which would drive down what the big makers charge. It would accomplish that by lowering the effective demand. (people get their insulin at affordable prices from a non-profit-motive source, which takes the air out of demanding the higher price)
Similar things could be done with rent, food, etc.
People would have the choice of purchasing commercial products, or govt produced products. The jobs created by the govt entering those markets would further force the positions of employers to reconsider employee conditions and benefits as well, since the fed would be a major competitor in terms of labor.
Rather than pure planned economy, where the govt owns *ALL* industries, 100%, this would just be a regulated economy, where downward pressure is applied through market means, via govt set prices for govt produced goods.
Functionally, it bears a resemblance to a price-war downward spiral, but unlike a price-war, the fed's pockets are theoretically endless, and the price they set, is not set to destroy competitors-- It is set to control market valuation of products, in a "soft" manner. (nothing would stop commercial companies from continuing to demand their desired price points-- aside from the fact they wont have market dominance. EG, they could still be the Apple "premium product" compared to the android "baseline option")
I'd honestly been thinking about the "Government entering the industry as a stabilizing entity" for a while now, and I think the largest problems are:
1. How do you go about deciding which industries and which products/services are essential enough to warrant the government's direct entry and interference. This hearkens back to one of the key flaws of communism, the government having to deduce demand and then supply accordingly, and it's such an enormous hassle for a command economy that they can't help but produce either too little and have no impact, or produce too much and glut the market. Say what you will about the evils of the profit motive, it atleast directs people's actions towards people's wants and needs in a timely manner; a government body without that motive is bound hand-and-foot not by the desire for survival but by arbitrary quotas and regulations, leading to under or over-performance. Most likely under.
2. Does a government entering into competition only do so on one level of a supply chain, or does it try to inhabit every single portion of a supply chain of a particular industry, ala Mcdonald's? I can easily imagine an overbudgeted government factory for "Product X" having an unbelievable number of leeches and hanger-ons who make it their business to exploit the unlimited wallet of these government-company wannabes. This would naturally stifle the intended effect of a company designed to regulate by having every portion of the supply chain trying to gouge them as an easy target.
3. The businesses these Government-companies are meant to compete with are, in the largest cases, international companies. At most they could fill a portion of the domestic market, but that constitutes only a portion of the offending company's bottom line. If anything, I could see large companies deciding to play hard ball and simply deciding to pull out completely of areas that have government sponsored competition, forcing the government to enlarge themselves to fill up that market and introducing the many economic problems that entails, until they inevitably fail and collapse, damning the well-intentioned idea in the public's eyes as another communistic failure.
4. The hardest part, of course, is getting corrupt politicians to turn on their corporate masters. Can't do nuthin' if your political system is broke as fuck from top to bottom.