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Except that Samuel wants to keep his place. So he will do whatever he can to leverage his current centrality to continue. His hope is to be in control when th

Except that Samuel wants to keep his place. So he will do whatever he can to leverage his current centrality to continue. His hope is to be in control when the hammer falls and flexibility stops. One way of doing that is to force the issue. Those in central positions within a dynamic market eventually seek to kill that market, leaving them in the monopoly position (amazon, google, facebook etc). To maintain decentralization in the long term such leaders need to be periodically culled, hopefully though market forces prior to them killing the market. In bitcoin, that might mean periodic removal of the largest commercial actors, perhaps by periodic price crashes that favor niche setups.

roenxi 4y ago
> (amazon, google, facebook etc) I'm not sure where I sit on your major point, but these 3 just are not monopolists and this is a mistake that keeps getting made. All 3 of these are in cut throat markets where they compete by selling really great products (AWS, Google Search and Facebook respectively). A lot of individuals don't like them (I refuse to use Google, for example) but that doesn't change the fact that they get market share by being great at what they do.
- deebosong 4y ago
  Aren't Goog/ Ama/ Fbook known for swallowing up smaller companies who might be potential threats/ competitors, and "kill them off" via this method? Seems like it's common practice for such entities.
- theplumber 4y ago
  Wow... and you really believe that? It's just like with Microsoft. Once they've got enough money and market share they destroyed their competition through various monopolistic tactics: i.e acquisitions, dumping, lockin etc
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  Making great products isn’t incompatible with being a monopolist, is it? For example, Google isn’t the default search provider for Firefox just because it’s a great product. They pay Mozilla more than any new competitor could afford. By the way: I’m not an economist, so I read this article to see if my claim makes sense: https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3262 https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3262
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  I know less about AWS and Good ads, but Facebook has bought each and every social network it could afford to prevent any chance of havjng competition - most notably Instagram and WhatsApp. That is the very definition of monopolistic practices.
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  Google is very much a monopolist in search. They have more than a 80% usage share of the space (most places I look at say 90% today), and have had that much share for more than a decade. (On a separate note they are in a duopoly with Apple in the Phone OS market and a borderline monopoly in the web browser market, giving them a lot of power to throw around in general.) Facebook I go back and forth on. They are undoubtably the biggest player in the social media space, but if you count all social media (reddit, twitter, Pinterest) they are large but definitely not monopoly level. On the other hand, when it comes to real name interaction and local community organization they are completely dominant over the other players. Ultimately I consider the acquisition of instagram to have been over the line enough to consider them deserving of the treatment of a monopoly, but it’s not as obvious a case a google. Their space also isn’t as cut-throat as you would expect due to network effects, and there are other countries where they are in fact locally a completely dominant monopoly. Amazon is definitely not a monopoly by any reasonable definition. All of the fields they are in have multiple other major players as well that they are in fierce competition with.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
    > Amazon is definitely not a monopoly by any reasonable definition. All of the fields they are in have multiple other major players as well that they are in fierce competition with I can't agree with that. 1) Amazon self-preferences their own products 2) Amazon makes knock-offs of third-party products that succeed 3) For third-party sellers, Amazon is just about the only marketplace that matters. The rest combined don't come close to matching it. John Oliver covered all of this recently. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/john-oliver-tech-monopolies-1367047/ https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/john-oliver-tech-mon... https://fossbytes.com/watch-john-oliver-tear-apart-big-tech-in-simple-words/ https://fossbytes.com/watch-john-oliver-tear-apart-big-tech-...
    - NineStarPoint 4y ago
      1 and 2 are anti-competitive (and anti-competitive practices on that level are 100% a reason to bring an anti-trust case again them), but that doesn’t make them a monopoly. From a buyers perspective, there are plenty of other places to go buy everything they sell. 3 is an interesting point though. I’m having trouble finding good numbers on exactly how dominant they are as a platform for third party sales but they have at least 3-4 times the GMV of their next largest competitor, Ebay. Best I can find is that, in the US, there was about 900 Billion in online marketplace in 2021, of which Amazon represented about 400 Billion. Being 44% of the market is probably bordering on monopoly level. (And to the first points, about half of their sales were their own products on their own marketplace, so I’d definitely be in support of an anti-trust investigation at the least here)
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Google is, and acts exactly like a monopoly in search. They intentionally degrade the effectiveness of their search to support their otyer business. Even when they are trying, they have been getting progressively worse at finding the real content, and many times put the same 5 garbage spam sites into the top 5 positions for a huge variety of searches. They even use their monopoly position to bully the entire world into degenerating all online content into a homogeneous soup of gpt-3 generated gibberish and to push products like amp. They are a duopoly in mobile OS, and a monopoly on browsers -- which they use to bully the world into altering the internet to their benefit and reduce the effectiveness of ad and tracking blockers. Facebook have such domination over the social graph, that they intentionally sever vertices, and then charge for the privilege of having them reconnected. The precise opposite of what they claim their service is for. AWS has competitors for now, but google and microsoft are only able to half-compete by leveraging their other monopolies.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
masswerk 4y ago
However, in praxis, not every participant in an economic system is a perfect player in the sense of game theory. Take for instance the history of the London Underground and its rivaling companies and directors. There are several instances, where a player maintained a position detrimental both to their own economy (as in profits and strategic position) and to the entire system (as in gains that may be secured in the future), as other motives take over. (E.g., hurting another player gains top priority, even if the damages inflicted to the respective own position exceeds the damages inflicted to the competing player. Even to the extent of losing that position altogether, as in being fired as the director.) Notably, this was a system with multiple controlling parties, as directors and boards, acts of parliament, financiers, etc, still, this couldn't stop this kind of behavior. (E.g., blocking closing the circle line is a prime example.)
- masswerk 4y ago
  Apparently, this (or the intent of this) requires an explanation. This is a comment on the factuality of statements like, "Except that Samuel wants to keep his place," and a reminder that game theory is an interesting thought experiment, but not an accurate description of human social behavior. There's nothing in the rules or the setup of a "game" that would determine moves as actually observed and about anything may happen. Including even worse outcomes than pictured here. At best, it describes an inherent tendency.

roenxi 4y ago

> (amazon, google, facebook etc) I'm not sure where I sit on your major point, but these 3 just are not monopolists and this is a mistake that keeps getting made. All 3 of these are in cut throat markets where they compete by selling really great products (AWS, Google Search and Facebook respectively). A lot of individuals don't like them (I refuse to use Google, for example) but that doesn't change the fact that they get market share by being great at what they do.

deebosong 4y ago
Aren't Goog/ Ama/ Fbook known for swallowing up smaller companies who might be potential threats/ competitors, and "kill them off" via this method? Seems like it's common practice for such entities.
theplumber 4y ago
Wow... and you really believe that? It's just like with Microsoft. Once they've got enough money and market share they destroyed their competition through various monopolistic tactics: i.e acquisitions, dumping, lockin etc
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
Making great products isn’t incompatible with being a monopolist, is it? For example, Google isn’t the default search provider for Firefox just because it’s a great product. They pay Mozilla more than any new competitor could afford. By the way: I’m not an economist, so I read this article to see if my claim makes sense: https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3262 https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3262
tsimionescu 4y ago
I know less about AWS and Good ads, but Facebook has bought each and every social network it could afford to prevent any chance of havjng competition - most notably Instagram and WhatsApp. That is the very definition of monopolistic practices.
NineStarPoint 4y ago
Google is very much a monopolist in search. They have more than a 80% usage share of the space (most places I look at say 90% today), and have had that much share for more than a decade. (On a separate note they are in a duopoly with Apple in the Phone OS market and a borderline monopoly in the web browser market, giving them a lot of power to throw around in general.) Facebook I go back and forth on. They are undoubtably the biggest player in the social media space, but if you count all social media (reddit, twitter, Pinterest) they are large but definitely not monopoly level. On the other hand, when it comes to real name interaction and local community organization they are completely dominant over the other players. Ultimately I consider the acquisition of instagram to have been over the line enough to consider them deserving of the treatment of a monopoly, but it’s not as obvious a case a google. Their space also isn’t as cut-throat as you would expect due to network effects, and there are other countries where they are in fact locally a completely dominant monopoly. Amazon is definitely not a monopoly by any reasonable definition. All of the fields they are in have multiple other major players as well that they are in fierce competition with.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
  > Amazon is definitely not a monopoly by any reasonable definition. All of the fields they are in have multiple other major players as well that they are in fierce competition with I can't agree with that. 1) Amazon self-preferences their own products 2) Amazon makes knock-offs of third-party products that succeed 3) For third-party sellers, Amazon is just about the only marketplace that matters. The rest combined don't come close to matching it. John Oliver covered all of this recently. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/john-oliver-tech-monopolies-1367047/ https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/john-oliver-tech-mon... https://fossbytes.com/watch-john-oliver-tear-apart-big-tech-in-simple-words/ https://fossbytes.com/watch-john-oliver-tear-apart-big-tech-...
  - NineStarPoint 4y ago
    1 and 2 are anti-competitive (and anti-competitive practices on that level are 100% a reason to bring an anti-trust case again them), but that doesn’t make them a monopoly. From a buyers perspective, there are plenty of other places to go buy everything they sell. 3 is an interesting point though. I’m having trouble finding good numbers on exactly how dominant they are as a platform for third party sales but they have at least 3-4 times the GMV of their next largest competitor, Ebay. Best I can find is that, in the US, there was about 900 Billion in online marketplace in 2021, of which Amazon represented about 400 Billion. Being 44% of the market is probably bordering on monopoly level. (And to the first points, about half of their sales were their own products on their own marketplace, so I’d definitely be in support of an anti-trust investigation at the least here)
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Google is, and acts exactly like a monopoly in search. They intentionally degrade the effectiveness of their search to support their otyer business. Even when they are trying, they have been getting progressively worse at finding the real content, and many times put the same 5 garbage spam sites into the top 5 positions for a huge variety of searches. They even use their monopoly position to bully the entire world into degenerating all online content into a homogeneous soup of gpt-3 generated gibberish and to push products like amp. They are a duopoly in mobile OS, and a monopoly on browsers -- which they use to bully the world into altering the internet to their benefit and reduce the effectiveness of ad and tracking blockers. Facebook have such domination over the social graph, that they intentionally sever vertices, and then charge for the privilege of having them reconnected. The precise opposite of what they claim their service is for. AWS has competitors for now, but google and microsoft are only able to half-compete by leveraging their other monopolies.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

masswerk 4y ago

However, in praxis, not every participant in an economic system is a perfect player in the sense of game theory. Take for instance the history of the London Underground and its rivaling companies and directors. There are several instances, where a player maintained a position detrimental both to their own economy (as in profits and strategic position) and to the entire system (as in gains that may be secured in the future), as other motives take over. (E.g., hurting another player gains top priority, even if the damages inflicted to the respective own position exceeds the damages inflicted to the competing player. Even to the extent of losing that position altogether, as in being fired as the director.) Notably, this was a system with multiple controlling parties, as directors and boards, acts of parliament, financiers, etc, still, this couldn't stop this kind of behavior. (E.g., blocking closing the circle line is a prime example.)

masswerk 4y ago
Apparently, this (or the intent of this) requires an explanation. This is a comment on the factuality of statements like, "Except that Samuel wants to keep his place," and a reminder that game theory is an interesting thought experiment, but not an accurate description of human social behavior. There's nothing in the rules or the setup of a "game" that would determine moves as actually observed and about anything may happen. Including even worse outcomes than pictured here. At best, it describes an inherent tendency.