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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 wher

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.

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.