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kashkhan

competition (winner takes all) naturally results in oligopoly or monopoly in any market. The market is unstable.

You can fight this by unending regulation/antitrust. Or by finding better ways to distribute scarce resources.

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> competition (winner takes all) naturally results in oligopoly or monopoly in any market.

Naturally? Name one. Google/Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Tesla don't have monopolies.

To name two which have formed oligopolies:

- cellphone carriers in the US

- airlines in the US

Not monopolies.

So? The post mentioned monopolies _AND_ oligopolies. Whether they're monopolies is thus irrelevant.

look at market shares over time. initially you have innovation. then many entrants fight for it. then one wins.

google is search monopoly

amazon has ecommerce and AWS.

netflix was innovator, middle period.

apple is taking 80% of profits in mobile. middle period.

tesla/electric cars is in beginning.

None of those are monopolies.

How is Google not a monopoly? Their nearest competitor is probably 10 times smaller.

bing.com

2.5% market share. Not a real competitor.

I use it. Maybe you can try it for a while and see if you find its results competitive.

Even if the search results are good, Google is still a monopoly.

You need to get the idea out of your head that "monopoly" means literally has no competitor.

Bingo.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32762714>

Does Google not have a monopoly on search?

bing.com

"In any market" is too strong a statement. In markets with high barriers to entry or other factors that make it less competitive, sure, and we call them natural monopolies. But you're claiming that every market is a natural monopoly.

yes some markets take longer times and sometime tech changes so we never reach the end. but the end result is always the same as long as firms are involved. It's a feature of capitalism.

It's not some immutable law of capitalism. There is such a thing as diseconomies of scale, where firms that are too large end up being less competitive and unable to innovate as quickly. Once they reach that size they might borrow the power of government to crush competition and retain their monopoly, but at that point we may as well it call a feature of socialism, not of capitalism.

I'd be surprised if in twenty years of market forces (that is, assuming neither government antitrust action nor cronyist behavior making competitors illegal) more people were using Google for search than they are now.

If monopolies are always the end result in a free market, name one.

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