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The problem with your argument is that electricity is fungible and it's wide available. When you buy you Nissan Leaf, you don't need Tesla's charging ports, you

The problem with your argument is that electricity is fungible and it's wide available. When you buy you Nissan Leaf, you don't need Tesla's charging ports, you can plug it on any power outlet. You might miss the fast charging, but that's it. When you go buy a phone, one of the factors you have to decide is "what app store do I want". If you go with Android, you might miss a few apps, but so what ? Most of them are also fungible, just use a similar one. If it wasn't like that, we could say that Wall Mart is a monopoly because only they sell Great Value branded products.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> The problem with your argument is that electricity is fungible and it's wide available. When you buy you Nissan Leaf, you don't need Tesla's charging ports, you can plug it on any power outlet. You might miss the fast charging, but that's it. You're explaining why Tesla doesn't have a charging port monopoly in practice. The hypothetical is that they do. You can't use any other power outlet in the same way that you can't install an Android app on an iPhone. > When you go buy a phone, one of the factors you have to decide is "what app store do I want". Which is what creates the app store monopoly. There wouldn't be one if you could make that decision independently, which is the whole point. It's classic tying. Moreover, the "customer" of the app store is as much the developer as the user, given that they're the ones paying all the fees. But they don't get to choose between platforms any more than Walmart chooses to operate in Florida instead of California, because they have to reach their customers in both regions, not just one or the other. By contrast, Nike can choose Target instead of Walmart because they both operate in both regions, so they can still reach substantially all of their customers through one store if the other is being unreasonable, since it's much easier for the customer to switch stores for a desired product when that doesn't require switching locations/platforms at the same time.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> The problem with your argument is that electricity is fungible and it's wide available. When you buy you Nissan Leaf, you don't need Tesla's charging ports, you can plug it on any power outlet. You might miss the fast charging, but that's it. You're explaining why Tesla doesn't have a charging port monopoly in practice. The hypothetical is that they do. You can't use any other power outlet in the same way that you can't install an Android app on an iPhone. > When you go buy a phone, one of the factors you have to decide is "what app store do I want". Which is what creates the app store monopoly. There wouldn't be one if you could make that decision independently, which is the whole point. It's classic tying. Moreover, the "customer" of the app store is as much the developer as the user, given that they're the ones paying all the fees. But they don't get to choose between platforms any more than Walmart chooses to operate in Florida instead of California, because they have to reach their customers in both regions, not just one or the other. By contrast, Nike can choose Target instead of Walmart because they both operate in both regions, so they can still reach substantially all of their customers through one store if the other is being unreasonable, since it's much easier for the customer to switch stores for a desired product when that doesn't require switching locations/platforms at the same time.