At first I thought this comment was right on the money, but then I read the article. "... the decline in new retail businesses isn’t an acute crisis. More worr

At first I thought this comment was right on the money, but then I read the article. "... the decline in new retail businesses isn’t an acute crisis. More worrying, however, is the decline in high-tech business formation. Tech businesses, unlike corner stores, tend to be high-growth businesses...." Sonnyblarney, did you read the article before posting? One big trend I've noticed is that small businesses (startups and slow growth businesses alike) are much more likely to do business with startups. A decline in small business is a positive (not good) feedback loop that adversely affects startups. Consolidation in many sectors is out of control, not just tech. Finance, media, healthcare come to mind, but it's really endemic because fewer small businesses means fewer customers, longer sales cycles, more bureaucracy to navigate and therefore fewer startups. Putting this in the broader geopolitical context, government antitrust actions are nowhere in sight. National champions, a la Putin & Xi Jinping, and subsidized state-owned enterprises (SOE) will eat the free market's lunch, in the short run, every time. Economic liberalism is really in a difficult spot because globalization has opened our markets to this kind of exploitation.