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Why is "competitors" a dirty word?

• burnte 11y ago
  Because competition requires capital investment to be better than the competition. Capital investment reduces what can be taken as profit. Profit should be above all else, so therefore huge corporations have an incentive to encourage regulations that prevent competition. It's pretty much the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand thought would happen, despite the fact that it's a glaringly obvious conclusion. Government regulations and business are both part of an ecosystem we call "the economy." In order for that ecosystem to be healthy, we must balance regulation and business, because when one is too powerful, the economy stagnates causing problems like we had in the Great Recession. We let banks get too big, and they fell on us. Water monopolies always fail. Always.
• wtallis 11y ago
  Because in this context it's a bit dishonest. In most markets, cable companies don't face any direct competition to their higher tiers of service. The only pressures they're subject to are the threats of customers leaving them geographically or an upstart like Google Fiber moving in. Cable companies aren't completely insulated, but they still operate in a highly dysfunctional market where most of what you'd be tempted to call the competition shouldn't properly be regarded as such. And they like it that way.