4 ms·

I have a sneaking suspicion that with every dissolved monopoly future monopolies get stronger. They must religiously case study all prior cases and strengthen t

I have a sneaking suspicion that with every dissolved monopoly future monopolies get stronger. They must religiously case study all prior cases and strengthen the right areas.

tantalor 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- falcolas 9y ago
  Well, yes. Evolution is heavily influenced by survivorship biases.
nostrademons 9y ago
I don't think that's true. We speak of AppAmaGooBook now (i.e. an oligopoly of 4 major players), while in the 1990s it was "Wintel" (2 players, one a hardware monopoly and one a software monopoly) and in the 60s it was "IBM and the 7 dwarfs" (i.e. IBM was the only relevant computer company). IBM controlled 70 percent of the whole computer market, around what Google controls of the Search market now, which is a small subfield of computation. And these all pale in comparison to 19th century monopolies, like Standard Oil (90% of U.S. refining capacity in 1880) or American Tobacco (100% of the tobacco market in 1900). I think the reason they seem bigger is because the economy is bigger, and so in dollar and output terms they are bigger. But that also means there are more niches and greater complexity, and it becomes harder to sustain a monopoly against multiple competitive threats over time. While the playbook of monopoly managers has expanded since 1900, the number of adversaries they face has expanded faster.
- aidos 9y ago
  Ironically it took me a moment to realize that Book was Facebook :-) This is a great comment to put things in perspective. It’s easy to forget that Google has only had “dominance” for about a decade. They have diversified quite a lot though (autonomous vehicles, the mobile market etc). And Apple literally have enough cash stockpiled to takeover countries if they choose to wage war. It’s all pretty fleeting though.
- zjaffee 9y ago
  The difficult comparison here is that we have never seen any company monopolize so much of media as we have facebook and google do world wide. The only comparable example I see is possibly disney, and I wouldn't be surprised to see facebook and google succeeding far into the future due to well targeted acquisitions. Additionally, it's important to remember that all of the largest american oil companies today are descendants of standard oil, and I imagine such could very well be likely if any of these other big monopolies were broken up today when it comes to the internet.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    The point is that when declaring "this time it's different", you have to explain away all the many, many things that are exactly the same, and not just point out the one thing that's a little different. The Facebook/CA scandal broke in traditional media, and traditional media hasn't exactly been downplaying the possibility of Facebook-powered "fake news" influencing of elections, either. I think that tells you everything you need to know about the purported monopolisation of the media by Facebook.
  - ohtwenty 9y ago
    There's an interesting point in comparing to old companies, mainly that they were actually ridiculously big: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-of-ridiculously-big-companies.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-...
amphibian87 9y ago
that's what Frank Herbert theorized with CHOAM Company in Dune. Eventually one company managed everything from food stuffs to military kit to intergalactic space engine fuel. I think they even set the contracts for the pilot's guild, and do orbital surveillance, so it's not just goods but services. Seems realistic to me, when capitalism stops working as envisaged by its own founder, because the mechanism of the state gets bought out by the capitalists, and isn't enforcing anti-trust laws or competition.

I have a sneaking suspicion that with every dissolved monopoly future monopolies get stronger. They must religiously case study all prior cases and strengthen the right areas.

tantalor 9y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

falcolas 9y ago
Well, yes. Evolution is heavily influenced by survivorship biases.

nostrademons 9y ago

I don't think that's true. We speak of AppAmaGooBook now (i.e. an oligopoly of 4 major players), while in the 1990s it was "Wintel" (2 players, one a hardware monopoly and one a software monopoly) and in the 60s it was "IBM and the 7 dwarfs" (i.e. IBM was the only relevant computer company). IBM controlled 70 percent of the whole computer market, around what Google controls of the Search market now, which is a small subfield of computation. And these all pale in comparison to 19th century monopolies, like Standard Oil (90% of U.S. refining capacity in 1880) or American Tobacco (100% of the tobacco market in 1900). I think the reason they seem bigger is because the economy is bigger, and so in dollar and output terms they are bigger. But that also means there are more niches and greater complexity, and it becomes harder to sustain a monopoly against multiple competitive threats over time. While the playbook of monopoly managers has expanded since 1900, the number of adversaries they face has expanded faster.

aidos 9y ago
Ironically it took me a moment to realize that Book was Facebook :-) This is a great comment to put things in perspective. It’s easy to forget that Google has only had “dominance” for about a decade. They have diversified quite a lot though (autonomous vehicles, the mobile market etc). And Apple literally have enough cash stockpiled to takeover countries if they choose to wage war. It’s all pretty fleeting though.
zjaffee 9y ago
The difficult comparison here is that we have never seen any company monopolize so much of media as we have facebook and google do world wide. The only comparable example I see is possibly disney, and I wouldn't be surprised to see facebook and google succeeding far into the future due to well targeted acquisitions. Additionally, it's important to remember that all of the largest american oil companies today are descendants of standard oil, and I imagine such could very well be likely if any of these other big monopolies were broken up today when it comes to the internet.
- mseebach 9y ago
  The point is that when declaring "this time it's different", you have to explain away all the many, many things that are exactly the same, and not just point out the one thing that's a little different. The Facebook/CA scandal broke in traditional media, and traditional media hasn't exactly been downplaying the possibility of Facebook-powered "fake news" influencing of elections, either. I think that tells you everything you need to know about the purported monopolisation of the media by Facebook.
- ohtwenty 9y ago
  There's an interesting point in comparing to old companies, mainly that they were actually ridiculously big: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-of-ridiculously-big-companies.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-...

amphibian87 9y ago

that's what Frank Herbert theorized with CHOAM Company in Dune. Eventually one company managed everything from food stuffs to military kit to intergalactic space engine fuel. I think they even set the contracts for the pilot's guild, and do orbital surveillance, so it's not just goods but services. Seems realistic to me, when capitalism stops working as envisaged by its own founder, because the mechanism of the state gets bought out by the capitalists, and isn't enforcing anti-trust laws or competition.