Comment by throwaway132448
11 hours ago
> Literally no one benefits from the alternative.
Future you might disagree with present you. But even if we disregard time, I think millions of consumers would benefit from the opportunity to have competitive markets again. If an actual economic forest fire was allowed to burn, we might eliminate some of the too-big-to-fail corruption and oligopoly that is the norm now and provide space for new seeds to grow.
The problem with this idea which is common in some circles is that most of the businesses involved are commodity or lowish margin. They likely got built either with government support or before the current margin's were a thing. Becdause you can't make a high enough ROI on building a new competitor your seeds will likely die in barren soil never having germinated. In today's markets the likely result will be increased business going to China, India, Vietnam and the like. If you're talking about banking then the worst possible scenario at a national level is that you're borrowing money denominated in a foreign currency. The adventure after 1929 was a result of deliberate policy to liquidate and let it burn.
You can’t have competition forever. At some point someone wins decisively, and then there is only the illusion of competition.
We already have anti-trust and other regulation to manage this problem, we simply need to use it.
There's no end of competition, the world changes, companies bloat and make bad choices, smaller competitors can react and change faster - it's only in our corporate hegemony that we don't consider that a viable alternative.
End of antitrust is the decisive victory.
Companies also learn from history, and with enough data, can make perfect decisions in real time. The end result, is you end up with “Final Companies”, where a market becomes so dominated an entrant cannot even start up, because it requires operating to even greater perfection just to stay in the game.