Comment by netdevphoenix
8 hours ago
It is a trade-off between convenience and freedom. Netflix vs buying your movies. Spotify vs mp3s. Most tech products have alternatives. But you need to be flexible and adjust your expectations. Most people are not willing to do that
The issue is that real life is not adaptable. Resources and capital are slow.
That's the whole issue with monopolies for example, innit? We envision "ideal free market dynamics" yet in practice everybody just centralizes for efficiency gains.
> The issue is that real life is not adaptable. Resources and capital are slow. > That's the whole issue with monopolies for example, innit?
The much bigger issue with monopolies is that there is no pressure on the monopolist to compete on price or quality of the offering.
Right, and my point is that "ideal free market dynamics" conveniently always ignore this failure state that seems to always emerge as a logical consequence of its tenets.
I don't have a better solution, but it's a clear problem. Also, for some reason, more and more people (not you) will praise and attack anyone who doesn't defend state A (ideal equilibrium). Leaving no room to point out state B as a logical consequence of A which requires intervention.
The definition of a monopoly basically resolves to "those companies that don't get pressured to meaningfully compete on price or quality", it's a tautology. If a firm has to compete, it doesn't remain a monopoly. What's the point you're making here?
That's just a post hoc rationalization. If the capital owners don't want something to happen then market dynamics don't matter a lick