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I like to imagine how insanely good Google’s customer service would be if no company including them captured more than 5-10% of market share.

by crmd 2y ago

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. It's reminiscent of bureaucracy in third world countries where you will not get your passport issued or renewed until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role. The capitalist way of looking at that would be they maximally decreased the market price of their service, and the bribery is simply accounting for externalities that you weren't paying for in that market price. Or in other words, bribery is their support-funding model.
  - 6510 2y ago
    The model involves artificial scarcity and setting examples. You don't give a passport to 1000 people, charge $5 and you have $5000 charge $500 and you have $50 000, charge $5000 and you have $100 000, charge $20 000 and you have $200 000. I know one story where a prison charged 1 million for release. If extended family is not extremely poor they should really put their 3-50 k into the bag each to avoid all kinds of free services like torturing the victim and getting abducted themselves. If you [say] didn't buy the passport it is only fair to put you in prison? $20 000 is much more value for money than you think!
- crmd 2y ago
  100%. Monopoly destroys value for every market participant except for major shareholders of the monopolist.
- devbent 2y ago
  > Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. Microsoft at its worst had insanely good enterprise level support. Even small business owners had access to paid premium support options, and if the issue you reported turned out to be a product bug, the support costs were refunded.
pompino 2y ago
There is no market incentive for this to be the steady state. All companies only want to pay lip service to competition, but in reality, they do everything in their power to prevent competition and monopolize the market. Product tie-ins, lock-ins, exclusive contracts, etc. For your vision to be a reality there needs to be significant tax on monopolies and no company should be allowed to become a trillion dollar company. Taxes & Regulations FTW.
- genewitch 2y ago
  I'm actually shocked no one is arguing with you about your first two sentences. Capitalism will always have one lucky or unscrupulous company after another swallowing the smaller players. you have 5 equal companies producing widgets. One of the companies has their building near a freeway, and one day a fully loaded truck crashes through a railing and impacts their building, causing a fire and lots of damage. Sure, they have insurance or whatever, but that company's customers don't care about that, they needed those widgets this week. Luckily one of the other four companies has them in stock and they can fill their order elsewhere. That company they filled the order with now has more capital, perhaps they hire a new employee or buy additional tools or machines. Now they can out-compete the other four, for whatever reason, QC, price, etc. The former company might be unable to keep up with the 3+1 other companies on the same playing field, so may sell to one of the other four, but only the latter company in the above example may have the money available to buy. This is all simplified and nitpicking what i am saying is futile, because the point is - it doesn't matter how many companies are competing, nothing is in equilibrium, and this doesn't even get in to active sabotage or espionage. A lucky company will buy an unlucky company. Eventually you'll end up with 3 or fewer companies when there used to be dozens or even hundreds. The end goal of a company is to be like Samsung, General Electric, Sony, etc - make everything, sell everything, own everything. A company being lucky for a few quarters even gets to spend money lobbying for preferential regulations that prevent further competitors from entering the market! I don't have a solution, because there is a compelling argument to be made for huge companies being able to provide superior quality, price, whatever because of scales of economy, and it just takes one bright lawyer at a multinational to say "but if you break us up it will accelerate climate change because of x, y, z issues we have solved by fact of owning everything!" Limiting personal wealth to 10-100 million dollars, even "on paper", might prevent this, but that would require global cooperation. I think the upside that things would gradually become more affordable would be a good selling point - if all companies are operating with the understanding the shareholders, owners, etc have a hard ceiling on how much value they can extract from the endeavor...

I like to imagine how insanely good Google’s customer service would be if no company including them captured more than 5-10% of market share.

by crmd 2y ago

I like to imagine how insanely good Google’s customer service would be if no company including them captured more than 5-10% of market share.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago

Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. It's reminiscent of bureaucracy in third world countries where you will not get your passport issued or renewed until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role.

ethbr1 2y ago
> until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role. The capitalist way of looking at that would be they maximally decreased the market price of their service, and the bribery is simply accounting for externalities that you weren't paying for in that market price. Or in other words, bribery is their support-funding model.
- 6510 2y ago
  The model involves artificial scarcity and setting examples. You don't give a passport to 1000 people, charge $5 and you have $5000 charge $500 and you have $50 000, charge $5000 and you have $100 000, charge $20 000 and you have $200 000. I know one story where a prison charged 1 million for release. If extended family is not extremely poor they should really put their 3-50 k into the bag each to avoid all kinds of free services like torturing the victim and getting abducted themselves. If you [say] didn't buy the passport it is only fair to put you in prison? $20 000 is much more value for money than you think!
crmd 2y ago
100%. Monopoly destroys value for every market participant except for major shareholders of the monopolist.
devbent 2y ago
> Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. Microsoft at its worst had insanely good enterprise level support. Even small business owners had access to paid premium support options, and if the issue you reported turned out to be a product bug, the support costs were refunded.

pompino 2y ago

There is no market incentive for this to be the steady state. All companies only want to pay lip service to competition, but in reality, they do everything in their power to prevent competition and monopolize the market. Product tie-ins, lock-ins, exclusive contracts, etc. For your vision to be a reality there needs to be significant tax on monopolies and no company should be allowed to become a trillion dollar company. Taxes & Regulations FTW.

genewitch 2y ago
I'm actually shocked no one is arguing with you about your first two sentences. Capitalism will always have one lucky or unscrupulous company after another swallowing the smaller players. you have 5 equal companies producing widgets. One of the companies has their building near a freeway, and one day a fully loaded truck crashes through a railing and impacts their building, causing a fire and lots of damage. Sure, they have insurance or whatever, but that company's customers don't care about that, they needed those widgets this week. Luckily one of the other four companies has them in stock and they can fill their order elsewhere. That company they filled the order with now has more capital, perhaps they hire a new employee or buy additional tools or machines. Now they can out-compete the other four, for whatever reason, QC, price, etc. The former company might be unable to keep up with the 3+1 other companies on the same playing field, so may sell to one of the other four, but only the latter company in the above example may have the money available to buy. This is all simplified and nitpicking what i am saying is futile, because the point is - it doesn't matter how many companies are competing, nothing is in equilibrium, and this doesn't even get in to active sabotage or espionage. A lucky company will buy an unlucky company. Eventually you'll end up with 3 or fewer companies when there used to be dozens or even hundreds. The end goal of a company is to be like Samsung, General Electric, Sony, etc - make everything, sell everything, own everything. A company being lucky for a few quarters even gets to spend money lobbying for preferential regulations that prevent further competitors from entering the market! I don't have a solution, because there is a compelling argument to be made for huge companies being able to provide superior quality, price, whatever because of scales of economy, and it just takes one bright lawyer at a multinational to say "but if you break us up it will accelerate climate change because of x, y, z issues we have solved by fact of owning everything!" Limiting personal wealth to 10-100 million dollars, even "on paper", might prevent this, but that would require global cooperation. I think the upside that things would gradually become more affordable would be a good selling point - if all companies are operating with the understanding the shareholders, owners, etc have a hard ceiling on how much value they can extract from the endeavor...