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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Great insight! You can see this not only at the macro level (Google winning all of search by being marginally better than competitors), but at the micro level (top employee out of a team of 10 gets the bonus/promotion while everyone else gets nothing), and probably everywhere in between.

What I wonder is: Is this really an intrinsic quality of capitalism? What causes this "winner take most" reward system emerging in some areas of the economy but not others? In many industries, multiple competitors can exist with stability and split market share, and in others, having multiple competitors leads to a blood bath where only one can survive, winning it all.

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> Is this really an intrinsic quality of capitalism?

Hardly. The history of capitalism shows that absent government intervention to prop up companies, they rise and fall. When I started out, everyone was a-feared that IBM would inevitably take over the world. Then Microsoft dethroned them, and Microsoft was going to take over the world. Then Apple dethroned Microsoft. And on it goes.

There was Sears that dominated retail. Then Walmart shoved them aside. Now Amazon stepped all over Walmart.

See "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Christensen for a book full of examples.

All of those companies exist in a world with the threat of anti-trust regulation, and some were directly affected by it.

There are plenty of counterexamples from before that regulation, and there are still some today (e.g. ISPs).

> There are plenty of counterexamples from before that regulation

Name one :-)

Literally the entire reason antitrust laws were written? Standard Oil? General Motors? AT&T?

A little disingenuous to pretend that never happened.

Let's take Standard Oil. They never had a monopoly - at their peak they had a 90% market share. SO's market share slid steadily throughout the years of the anti-trust trial, and Rockefeller was unable to stem the slide. (The competition figured out how to beat him.)

See "Titan" by Ron Chernow

> pretend

I know what the popular wisdom is. But dig a little deeper and you'll find it is not correct.

> General Motors

was formed in 1908. The Sherman Antitrust Act was in 1890, so GM could not have been the reason for it.

> GM could not have been the reason for it

...which, to clarify, was not my point.

That is, going back up-thread a bit, it's still clear that capitalism intrinsically encourages monopolistic behavior, and that "government intervention propping up companies" is not the cause.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that even if there were no capitalistic tendency toward actual monopolies, it would still have the same winner-take-all problem, merely due to the prospect of a "winner".

Every company wants to be a monopoly, sure. But free market forces prevent that from happening. It takes government to prop one up.

A prospect and an actual problem are two different things.

SO was never convicted of being a monopoly, either. A subtle but crucial point, and usually overlooked.

I'm not sure on what basis you're claiming that free markets prevent monopolies, but even if they do, free markets self-destruct. Once corporations in a free market have enough money to start influencing politics they use it to start regulating in their favor and the market ceases to be free. You can regulate to prevent that, but then the market isn't free, yet again.

It's also a bit myopic to view companies as a binary monopoly/not monopoly. A company with 90% market share isn't a monopoly, but has most of the downsides of a monopoly, and likely is a monopoly within subsets of the market.

Free market forces don't prevent it from getting close enough to cause a problem (if that's even possible under capitalism- the problem we're talking about is due to the attempt to gain a monopoly, not having one). I couldn't care less what Standard Oil's maximum market share was, you're arguing an irrelevant technicality.

My point is, again, that in this case the prospect is what causes the problem.

> cause a problem

The "problem" was that kerosene prices dropped 70% under SO.

The real problem was that Rockefeller was rich, and then (like today) a lot of people just can't stand the idea that others are rich.

If you're really interested in going beyond soundbites and understand what was happening, I really recommend Chernow's "Titan". Chernow actually agrees with you, so you can't argue his book is unfair. Chernow's opinions, however, are not congruent with his presented facts in the book. He's just so convinced of Rockefeller's evil nature that he is blinded by his own narrative :-)

> The real problem was that Rockefeller was rich, and then (like today) a lot of people just can't stand the idea that others are rich.

dont you think its kind of upsetting when someone could improve someone's life drastically without any (practically speaking) detriment to their own. obscene wealth is upsetting to me, and i know lots of people who have it, and i dont hate them. so its not about the person, per se. i just find it extremely unfortunate, knowing first hand how things could be different, in an almost pareto improvement way.

right now there is someone who will die because they cannot afford proper medical care. the is almost certainly someone with a lot of money, doing nothing with it, that could fix that at no cost to themselves. thats a little upsetting right?

Neither of those are the problem I'm referring to, which should be obvious based on the thread we're in...

But to spell it out, the problem is that the winner-takes-all aspect encourages people to overwork themselves or their employees, despite the diminishing returns that brings.

Maybe you're just so convinced of capitalism's good nature that you were blinded to what we were talking about in the first place? ;)

I think you're inventing a problem. I don't know many capitalists or employees who believe they must work themselves to death because of some presumed winner-take-all aspect. In fact, I don't know any.

Few define business success as erasing all competition. Success is making a good profit.

> Let's take Standard Oil. They never had a monopoly - at their peak they had a 90% market share.

Out of curiosity in calibrating your definition of "monopoly", can you give an example of a monopoly (past or present) together with an estimate of their market share? Thanks.

Sure. The USPS has a monopoly on first class mail. Market share = 100%. The government prosecutes anyone else who tries to do it.

Up until a couple years ago, in Washington State, hard liquor could only be sold through state stores. 100% market share.

The plumber's union is a monopoly. It is illegal to hire a non-union plumber. 100% market share.

Anyone holding a patent, trademark, or copyright has a monopoly. 100% market share by law.

Are you aware that federal law uses a different definition of "monopoly"?

Isn't Christensen one of those thought leaders who are paid by megacorps to spread Gramscian false consciousness and make the masses think capitalism really isn't so bad?

Yes, facts don't matter, only the political pedigree of the person relating them.

I prefer to read books where the author tries to prove me wrong. Books that agree with me are boring :-)

Sounds like you already have your conclusion in mind, so why ask the question?

Is this irony?

I suspect that in industries with strong network effects, the winner-takes-most system is most prevalent, as say, one additional unit could mean stealing three units away from competitors in the long-term.

yes i wonder about that too. i never thought of myself as someone interested in economics, but i guess thats where you'd look for answers to why some markets are weighted towards winner take all and some aren't. my guess off the top is that it has to do with how easy it is to switch between two competing products, and how economies of scale work in the industry. if there is a big economy of scale, and its easy to switch between competitors, i think that makes for the biggest winner take all scenario.

I think the more fundamental connection is that when goods are perfect subsitutes for each other, under perfect information you always choose the "cheaper" good (where "cheap" is defined by whatever metric you're using).

Somewhat ironically, this fact actually has connections to the concept of dual variables in constrained optimization problems, the theory of which was largely developed in the Soviet Union for use in central planning.

very interesting! that seems to make sense. do you know of any good writing on examples?

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