Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004)

Re:Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004) by coldtea on Sunday February 05, 2017 @05:47AM (#13571786)

>If a startup disrupts a high margin industry, especially if that industry is also inefficient (which often goes together) and replaces it with a more efficient lower margin business model, then consumers will benefit.

If before you had independent smaller businesses or individuals, and now all that has been captured by a single company, then a job has just gone down the drain, and the road is open for monopoly.

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Re:Nullsoft: The death of the last maverick tech company (2004) by fauigerzigerk on Sunday February 05, 2017 @07:50AM (#13572189)

That is always a danger. But I think history has shown that monopolies or oligopolies are often less stable than they appear.

The assumption, beginning with Marx I think, was that monopolies have a self reinforcing element. That's true, but there is also a self defeating element. The more a monopoly absuses its power, the more complacent it becomes and the greater the incentive to disrupt it.

The problem is that governments sometimes collude with monopolists instead of making sure that markets are actually functioning as they should.

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