4 ms·

Unless they conspire in $20B/year search agreements.

by donny2018 3y ago

paholg 3y ago
That's not competition.
- bigfudge 3y ago
  And there’s no true Scotsman. This sort of thing is - in practice - what capitalism looks like in the 21st century.
  - achenet 3y ago
    I believe Peter Thiel would say that capitalism and competition are opposites, and the goal of capitalism is monopoly. https://morfene.com/021.pdf https://morfene.com/021.pdf
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      I'm not sure why people always attribute this observation to Thiel, as if it was something fringe, given how obvious and apparent it is. The goal of a profit-seeking entity is to maximize profit. That is achieved by becoming a monopoly. Competition is just the consequence of multiple entities trying to become a monopoly - there can be only one. This is the motive part of market economy. The energy source. Now, monopolies are obviously bad for society. Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent monopolies. This turns the market into an engine. You have constant inflow of upstarts dreaming of riches, fighting each other out to reach the throne of a monopolist, only to be denied it by regulation, and eventually become broken and/or pushed out by the younger followers. Or, via another analogy: the market economy is designed like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick attached to the animal, while standing on a treadmill. Being surprised that monopoly is the goal of companies is like being surprised the donkey would chase the carrot.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        > Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent monopolies. Markets are regulated to enable monopolies. Bell would have never become a monopoly if there wasn't the regulation involved in laying copper and Microsoft would have never become a monopoly if there wasn't intellectual property regulation.
        bigfudge 3y ago
        For Bell, presumably the goal was to provide a monopoly to achieve an otherwise difficult goal: universal service. That's certainly the case with the post office in the UK (although now being eroded). For Microsoft: I think that's a weird argument. Plus I think there would have been lots of things pushing towards a single big player for desktop computing in the early-middle days (network effects).
        randomdata 3y ago
        No matter what the goal was, it remains that other players would have jumped in if there wasn't the legal impediments. But such regulation provided a moat in which they were able to build their monopoly. Same goes for Microsoft. Everyone and their brother would have released their own 'Windows' if regulation weren't there to disallow it. Again, that regulation offered a moat which allowed them to establish their monopoly.
        bigfudge 3y ago
        From a long perspective I think the bell monopoly probably served an important purpose and may have been worth it. Not having universal service would have been socially divisive and culturally a problem. I think we need to stop judging things only on (presumed/assumed) economic efficiency. Non monetary values mean regulation is often important. We accept this with environmental and health/safety rules to some degree - I wish we could develop a language to argue for it more in other spheres. On the Ms point.. is your argument that we should have no intellectual property rights for software at all? It seems odd to single out only this example. I’m broadly not in favour of software patents but I’m not clear that they were relevant to MS success anyway. I think you need to make a clearer argument about what regulations we would have forgone for others to really evaluate your case.
    - altairTF 3y ago
      If you think capitalism like whe have today, using the government as regulation platforms, sure. If you think capitalism as a system where you free to pursue your capital, not so sure its sustainable to keep a monopoly.
    - matwood 3y ago
      I agree. The goal of capitalism is to crush all competition and become a monopoly - and that's ok. The problem is, we should treat the monopoly as the winning end state and then restart the game.
jdhendrickson 3y ago
Or conspire to cap engineer pay and get a slap on the wrist not equivalent to the money they saved, and then continued the collusion.
- randomdata 3y ago
  In that case Apple and Google are the consumer, though. It is the workers offering the service, who are competing for those capped positions, even while being aware of the situation. The consumer wins.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Why did consumer loose here? This would have definitely had effect on iPhone's cost.

Unless they conspire in $20B/year search agreements.

paholg 3y ago

That's not competition.

bigfudge 3y ago
And there’s no true Scotsman. This sort of thing is - in practice - what capitalism looks like in the 21st century.
- achenet 3y ago
  I believe Peter Thiel would say that capitalism and competition are opposites, and the goal of capitalism is monopoly. https://morfene.com/021.pdf https://morfene.com/021.pdf
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    I'm not sure why people always attribute this observation to Thiel, as if it was something fringe, given how obvious and apparent it is. The goal of a profit-seeking entity is to maximize profit. That is achieved by becoming a monopoly. Competition is just the consequence of multiple entities trying to become a monopoly - there can be only one. This is the motive part of market economy. The energy source. Now, monopolies are obviously bad for society. Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent monopolies. This turns the market into an engine. You have constant inflow of upstarts dreaming of riches, fighting each other out to reach the throne of a monopolist, only to be denied it by regulation, and eventually become broken and/or pushed out by the younger followers. Or, via another analogy: the market economy is designed like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick attached to the animal, while standing on a treadmill. Being surprised that monopoly is the goal of companies is like being surprised the donkey would chase the carrot.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent monopolies. Markets are regulated to enable monopolies. Bell would have never become a monopoly if there wasn't the regulation involved in laying copper and Microsoft would have never become a monopoly if there wasn't intellectual property regulation.
      - bigfudge 3y ago
        For Bell, presumably the goal was to provide a monopoly to achieve an otherwise difficult goal: universal service. That's certainly the case with the post office in the UK (although now being eroded). For Microsoft: I think that's a weird argument. Plus I think there would have been lots of things pushing towards a single big player for desktop computing in the early-middle days (network effects).
        randomdata 3y ago
        No matter what the goal was, it remains that other players would have jumped in if there wasn't the legal impediments. But such regulation provided a moat in which they were able to build their monopoly. Same goes for Microsoft. Everyone and their brother would have released their own 'Windows' if regulation weren't there to disallow it. Again, that regulation offered a moat which allowed them to establish their monopoly.
        bigfudge 3y ago
        From a long perspective I think the bell monopoly probably served an important purpose and may have been worth it. Not having universal service would have been socially divisive and culturally a problem. I think we need to stop judging things only on (presumed/assumed) economic efficiency. Non monetary values mean regulation is often important. We accept this with environmental and health/safety rules to some degree - I wish we could develop a language to argue for it more in other spheres. On the Ms point.. is your argument that we should have no intellectual property rights for software at all? It seems odd to single out only this example. I’m broadly not in favour of software patents but I’m not clear that they were relevant to MS success anyway. I think you need to make a clearer argument about what regulations we would have forgone for others to really evaluate your case.
  - altairTF 3y ago
    If you think capitalism like whe have today, using the government as regulation platforms, sure. If you think capitalism as a system where you free to pursue your capital, not so sure its sustainable to keep a monopoly.
  - matwood 3y ago
    I agree. The goal of capitalism is to crush all competition and become a monopoly - and that's ok. The problem is, we should treat the monopoly as the winning end state and then restart the game.

jdhendrickson 3y ago

Or conspire to cap engineer pay and get a slap on the wrist not equivalent to the money they saved, and then continued the collusion.

randomdata 3y ago
In that case Apple and Google are the consumer, though. It is the workers offering the service, who are competing for those capped positions, even while being aware of the situation. The consumer wins.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

Why did consumer loose here? This would have definitely had effect on iPhone's cost.