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In sectors where products can have infinite variety (like fashion), monopolies don't seem to happen because the small creative producers can create new market n

by Hermel 5y ago

In sectors where products can have infinite variety (like fashion), monopolies don't seem to happen because the small creative producers can create new market niches faster than the monopolies can enter them.

arrosenberg 5y ago
Eh, maybe 15-20 years ago, but fast fashion producers have made it much harder. You get 6-12 weeks before you get copied, at best. It's still possible to carve out a small business, but a lot of good business operators are being held back by those types of companies.
Spooky23 5y ago
Exactly. AT&T was a monopoly because it made sense to be one given the capital investment requirements and technology. Universal access was something that lifted up the whole country and had and has enduring value. Think of the bullshit and lack of interop between Facebook, Apple and Google messaging - without AT&T, you would have had that problem with legacy phones. They were tightly regulated, which worked well until technology moved ahead of the operations. Tight regulation works well when change rates are slow and you need to make capital investments. Short term decision making driven by final optimization always constrain capital investment. That’s why your power grid is less robust than it was 40 years ago.
dwohnitmok 5y ago
That's not clear to me. I don't know much about things like clothes fashion, but e.g. eyeglass fashion is completely dominated by Luxottica (resulting in eye-wateringly high markups) and fashion-adjacent fields such as music are still dominated by just a few labels (this one you can say is basically a product of legal lobbying for protections). The pattern there is that small producers for the most part fail and fizzle out. The few successful ones get snapped up by the big players.
twobitshifter 5y ago
This should happen with pizza, yet we see dominos successfully applying a monopoly strategy. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2019/04/30/fortress-made-of-pizza-dominos-ceo-ritch-allison-keeps-building-brands-lead/?sh=3079593f7782 https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2019/04/30/fortress-ma...

by Hermel 5y ago

arrosenberg 5y ago

Eh, maybe 15-20 years ago, but fast fashion producers have made it much harder. You get 6-12 weeks before you get copied, at best. It's still possible to carve out a small business, but a lot of good business operators are being held back by those types of companies.

Spooky23 5y ago

Exactly. AT&T was a monopoly because it made sense to be one given the capital investment requirements and technology. Universal access was something that lifted up the whole country and had and has enduring value. Think of the bullshit and lack of interop between Facebook, Apple and Google messaging - without AT&T, you would have had that problem with legacy phones. They were tightly regulated, which worked well until technology moved ahead of the operations. Tight regulation works well when change rates are slow and you need to make capital investments. Short term decision making driven by final optimization always constrain capital investment. That’s why your power grid is less robust than it was 40 years ago.

dwohnitmok 5y ago

That's not clear to me. I don't know much about things like clothes fashion, but e.g. eyeglass fashion is completely dominated by Luxottica (resulting in eye-wateringly high markups) and fashion-adjacent fields such as music are still dominated by just a few labels (this one you can say is basically a product of legal lobbying for protections). The pattern there is that small producers for the most part fail and fizzle out. The few successful ones get snapped up by the big players.

twobitshifter 5y ago

This should happen with pizza, yet we see dominos successfully applying a monopoly strategy. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2019/04/30/fortress-made-of-pizza-dominos-ceo-ritch-allison-keeps-building-brands-lead/?sh=3079593f7782 https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalebuss/2019/04/30/fortress-ma...