The free market is great at incentivizing companies to solve problems - but also to later "unsolve" solved problems so the company can keep their high profit ma

The free market is great at incentivizing companies to solve problems - but also to later "unsolve" solved problems so the company can keep their high profit margins even after the solutions have become trivial (see also Gillette, printer companies, out-of-patents drugs). The market solution to this "should" be that a competitor can undercut someone doing that, and drive them out of business - but why would anyone bother doing that, if the reward is to conquer a commoditized market that by all rights shouldn't be all that profitable, and isn't after your price war. If you have the chops to do that, you'll probably go into some other more profitable market instead (in that vein, hats off to that new drug company backed by Mark Cuban, if they end up actually doing that with generic drugs). Or someone does it, then gets an offer they can't refuse, so the upstart gets acquired by the incumbent, who can go back to exploiting their captive audience.