7 ms·

Yes, they can take their dollars away from one bad company and bring them to the other bad company instead. That will show them.

• oersted 10mo ago
  Or they can create a new good company and take all the customers, that's the fairytale at least. It does actually happen quite often, but then the good company predictably goes bad once its dominant, which may or may not be premeditated. Indeed, often the only way the good company can afford to be good is the prospect of eventually being able to be bad, worse even, to pay back that speculative investment. And on-and-on we go.
  • teeray 10mo ago
    > but then the good company predictably goes bad Don't forget the other fun variant: Bad company sees the rise of Good company, offers the founders F-U money, then puts all of Good Co.'s products into maintenance-mode post-acquisition to prevent them from competing with Bad Co.
  • danaris 10mo ago
    > It does actually happen quite often Maybe it used to. Nowadays, it's very, very hard for anyone not already born to generational wealth to have enough financial security to start their own competitor to any of the bad companies that are actually causing the problems. And those bad companies—by far the worst ones, the ones that most need some competition to make them honest again—are also the ones best able to destroy any competitor, because so much of what makes them bad is their titanic size.