3 ms·
Effectively every restaurant in the US has to pay either PepsiCo or Coca Cola. Similarly, if you want to buy a non-alcoholic beverage at the grocery store it's
by treis 6y ago
Effectively every restaurant in the US has to pay either PepsiCo or Coca Cola. Similarly, if you want to buy a non-alcoholic beverage at the grocery store it's mostly down to those two (with Dr. Pepper having a much smaller but still significant stake). Any competitor that emerges just gets bought up by one of the three.
Apple's half of the phone Duopoly. Either you pay them or pay Google if you want a phone and want to buy software for it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Ericson2314 6y agoYes. But in fairness I retracted rent sneaking as a combination of monopolization, bonafied rents, addiction, and just shear damn inertia contributes to the malaise. Calling it all "rent seeking" is not a hill I want to die one.
- throwaway201103 6y ago"Rent sneaking" is an interesting typo. Going to have to give some thought to how to use that term in appropriate context.
- ABeeSea 6y agoRestaurants only pay because consumers demand it and would not visit the restaurant otherwise. That’s not rent seeking. That’s market forces. And what they pay correlates with how much their customers demand coke/Pepsi.
- treis 6y agoThe rent seeking is buying up competitors until its a duopoly and then protecting that through shenanigans like exclusive agreements. It has nothing to do with consumer demand.
- ksec 6y agoBuying up competitor does not immediately make it a monopoly or duopoly. Especially in industry where barrier of entry are low. Exclusive / Special agreement with serving only one kind of Soda ( or no Pepsi where there is Coke ) are Anti-Competitive arrangement. Not Rent Seeking.
- deelowe 6y agoThe exclusivity contracts are what some consider to be rent seeking. I don't know if this is the correct term, but I do believe they are anti-capitalist and shouldn't be allowed in a capitalist economy. If freedom of choice is so important, than large businesses shouldn't be able to use their ability to corner the market to force you into exclusivity agreements.
- hncommenter13 6y agoI'm not sure this is quite right. I would have thought that most restaurants very much WANT to sell sodas, as the margins are enormous--much, much higher than the margins on cooked food. This page [0], for instance, says the cost of goods sold for the soda itself is a penny an ounce for the syrup and CO2. Iced tea is apparently the margin champion, as the same page indicates it can cost as little as a penny per glass. [0] https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Rules-of-Thumb-Industry-Averages-Standards.cfm https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Rules-of-T...