Comment by Herring

> Are economic moats anti-competitive, or just good business?

> A "natural monopoly" is "often the first supplier in a market" [0] How is being the first, thus more time to grow a market, anti-competitive in itself?

These are great questions, and you should ask your favorite frontier LLM. It's systems-level thinking, the ability to see the bigger picture, which takes a while to develop and a lot of reading.

You're thinking: Great! I'm making the right decisions and winning and making money hand over fist. That's good business.

I'm thinking: If your moat is super effective (shady or not doesn't matter), it limits competition (anti-competitive) => therefore eventually higher prices, lower quality, reduced innovation, potential for abuse, because there's less pressure to improve and more shareholder pressure for enshittification.

If you identify with the monopoly you can't see that bigger picture. A healthy market has tons of options for customers to choose from and be served by. Again, talk to the frontier LLMs, they're pretty good at this level. Also fact check them, eg read or watch videos about antitrust enforcement under FDR, that was a crazy bit of drama.