Changing the term, "natural market dynamics" to "regulatory captured markets", we get:
> or by throwing so much investor money at undercutting incumbents that the [regulatory captured markets] are temporarily skewed
And, taking my sibling comment from @simonkafan, let's change his term "well-functioning industry" to "regulatory captured industry":
> I feel that SC startups are like a horde of locusts flying over a [regulatory captured industry], pretending to improve it positively but all they do is destroy the competition
Consider, for a second, Uber and Lyft. Was the taxi industry well functioning? Did it have natural market dynamics? Definitely, assuming you acknowledge the predicate that the industry players are effectively cartels who control regulations.
This makes me wonder what even would be a natural or desired state of any market like this. I don't want companies to have agreements on bottom prices they aren't gonna go under. At the same time this dynamic clearly is fueled by the desire and promise to turn a profit once the competitor is gone. We don't want to set a monopoly in any market. On the other hand why aren't we seeing this in older industries? Why aren't airlines trying to drive each other out of business on price?
I think for as much as people talk about businesses undercutting a market to capture it and then profiting from a monopoly position, very few businesses ever make it past the undercutting stage.
As wrong as the efficient market hypothesis is about certain things, a great many industries actually do exist in a sort of perpetual state of trying to balance capturing market share with low prices with staying profitable.
I’m not sure that it pays its drivers more poorly than the taxi industry, and I’m not sure that users overpay. Do note, though, that both of those points imply “healthy economics / markets” (dynamic pricing on both sides).
But that doesn't forgive using regulatory capture to prevent anyone else from benefiting from the same things that helped you, that's just pulling the ladder up after you.
Uber did fix the problem of people who would happily make money driving a taxi being unable to because of regulatory capture. They made much worse the problem of drivers making a living wage, and when the sugar rush finally ends and they ultimately have to raise prices you know that extra margin isn't going to go to make the drivers whole and bring their wages back up to what a taxi driver used to make. It's going to go into Uber's investors' pockets.
Although personally I think Uber will just go the way of WeWork once people realize they own (close to) zero vehicles, have (close to) zero employed drivers, and lose money on every ride. What happens after that? Well, public transit has been gutted already so I guess... um... scooters?
Uber and Lyft do not seem to be in favor of a well-functioning industry either. The main strategy of Uber seems to be spending money to get a monopoly in the market and then increase prices and become profitable. How is that a well-functioning industry?
We forget that SV business are business that want to earn money. Regulatory captured industries and markets are not the problem, the problem is that those business aren't in them.
VCs for the most part want a massive return on investment to fit their business model and won't settle for niche businesses that promise only reasonable profits, no matter how technically innovative they may be or what they might lead to down the road. On the other side housing prices are through the roof, so good luck affording a garage/basement to bootstrap something in unless you're already indoctrinated into the VC/FAANG culture and successful within it, in which case you're naturally bias towards perpetuating more of the same.
For this reason SV is a software-to-software-integration (not software in general IMO) innovation hub. Software scales easily, requires no physical property to build things on and can return massive profits. SV excels at building software to accelerate other software. Building software to accelerate physical situations or specific communities that don't exist in the valley requires expertise that must be acquired outside of the valley and doesn't thrive in the valley.
In ag terms SV is a monoculture of software-to-software integration solutions that generally doesn't play well with other crops, with all the efficiencies and drawbacks therein.
Agriculture is a hyper-competitive low-margin market, and I have never gotten the impression that this industry is stagnant or incompetent. Those are the areas where disruption by outsiders isn't going to work.
For instance, it is telling that you can drill deep into the earth, pump a liquid to the surface, process it, transport it a significant distance to an expensive port, pump it into giant floating tankers, sail those around the world, suck the payload back out and pipe it to additional processing plants, pipe it across a continent, refine it into relatively finished product, pipe it hundreds of more miles to a depot, pump it into tankers, transport it to underground tanks, then pump it back up to sell to customers. You can imagine how much a product would cost per gallon. Then, as a customer, walk inside to pay for the product you just pumped and snag a gallon of milk. Guess which gallon is more expensive?
Put the milk back on the shelf and drive to your neighbour's house. Walk around to the back porch where they sell their milk out of an old fridge. Um, no, they don't sell it. That would be illegal. They just happen to have a fridge full of milk that people keep stealing. But the thieves have a conscience. They keep stuffing money into the tin can next to the fridge.
Because in the U.S. it is legal to sell a product with a big label that says, "WARNING: THIS PRODUCT WILL KILL YOU." Unless that product is milk.
Plenty of people have figured out how to sell milk cheaper than gasoline. But they are restricted by regulation.
You may well agree with the protections those regulations provide. But it might also look to you like the same problem as taxi cartels.
https://www.livescience.com/41883-raw-milk-1-in-6-get-sick.h...
Your link does not actually support your claim that 1 in 6 people who drink raw milk get sick from drinking the milk. If anything, it indicates that only 1 in 6 drinkers get sick at all. There doesn't seem to be a control group (or any real kind of science here), but if 1 in 3 people who don't drink raw milk get sick this might merit some follow-up studies. Perhaps raw milk lowers your risk of illness.
It would be silly to make a statement either way from the information contained in your link.
Around here, they're about the same. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
Farming is constantly improving yields and optimizing. It might look stagnant to outsiders but it's a meat grinder.
In one of my college classes, all of the "business" majors looked down on the farm kid who'd show up to class with blood on his boots during hunting season.
Then he'd give presentation after presentation / example of how his farm is using GPS coordinated UAVs to survey the crops and drive the tractors, and all sorts of other technology deployments that the kids in boat shoes had zero comprehension of.
Taxis in Chicago had an app even before Uber and Lyft. I think it was called Halo, or something like that.
Looking now I could find a used New Holland combine from 2005 for $71000 USD. That money gets you a used 2000-ish Ferrari 360.
And the combine makes you more money after you buy it.