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Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote: "If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those mono
by alexpotato 4mo ago
Rory Sutherland [0] has a great quote:
"If you really want to great phenomenal items here is the plan:
- enter a market
- become a monopoly
- use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality"
A recent example of that is Apple TV. Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising.
0 - https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561513200928 https://www.tiktok.com/@rorysutherlandclips/video/7314765561...
- matheusmoreira 4mo ago> use those monopoly profits to fund R&D/building items of incredible quality But why would a corporation do that when it could simply distribute those profits to shareholders?
- randallsquared 4mo agoUnless mandated, why would the people controlling a corporation (and its budget) do that? While the corp has money in the bank, it's kinda their money, in the sense that they decide what to spend it on. If distributed back to the shareholders, the money evaporates from their perspective, so there's not much incentive to do it unless it's required, or unless they will benefit by it (e.g., they have a lot of stock themselves and would like the dividend).
- matheusmoreira 4mo agoCorporations that have gone public are essentially lost causes. CEOs are incentivized to maximize shareholder profits at all costs, and it's much easier and cheaper to enshittify than to research and develop. I suppose it's possible for privately owned corporations to be awesome. If the guy in charge cares, awesome things will happen. Valve is the only concrete example that comes to mind.
- pjc50 4mo agoShareholders will happily vote to hand all the money over to the CEO if he's charismatic enough: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-musk-ended-up-with-132-billion-pay-package https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-27/how-elon-m...
- zipy124 4mo agoBecause you have the belief that you can generate a better ROI internally invested. Returning cash to shareholders is usually a negative sign for the company as it means they don't think they believe other companies will be better with the investment than themselves. It's only recently in the share-buyback age that this investment is rarer. The classic example is Amazon which was technically profitable for a while, but did not return shareholder cash for many many years, choosing to invest instead.
- sph 4mo agoIn other words: - enter a market - become a monopoly - use those monopoly profits to maintain your monopoly A playbook that's very much alive in all big tech companies, from Apple to Oracle.
- dosisking 4mo ago> Apple makes so much money that they can fund the creation of incredibly high quality shows with basically minimal advertising. But Apple has not created any high quality shows. Simply throwing money at something does not automatically make it good.
- solumunus 4mo agoCrazy take. Severance, Silo, Pluribus just off the top of my head. You don’t think they are high quality shows?