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I have yet to hear how businesses with network effects, high barrier to entry, and control of rare resources don't inevitably become monopolies. Everything you'

I have yet to hear how businesses with network effects, high barrier to entry, and control of rare resources don't inevitably become monopolies. Everything you're citing is just one form of those. Look at Facebook or Google, did government regs really help them become so huge?

lend000 9y ago
Perhaps this will be interesting to you: http://www.aei.org/publication/charts-of-the-day-creative-destruction-in-the-sp500-index/ http://www.aei.org/publication/charts-of-the-day-creative-de... Dominant players get displaced all the time. Famous examples you've likely heard of include Kodak, Yahoo, and Sears. As for Google and Facebook -- people like the products. Consumers are happy. The people on HN concerned about privacy and wasted time advocate tools which have little traction in the market - things like DuckDuckGo (great tool btw.) Why? Because consumers don't care. If FB started charging $100/month for account access tomorrow, you'd better believe they'd be out of business pretty fast (so they won't). How is that a malevolent monopoly? But eventually, even they will make enough mistakes and be overtaken by more innovative companies, as difficult as that may be to consider right now.