Hotelling’s Game, or Why Gas Stations Have Competitors Nearby

Re:Hotelling’s Game, or Why Gas Stations Have Competitors Ne... by jamesbritt on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @09:17PM (#2814981)

Good point. I don't doubt that some form of what was described plays a role, but it's interesting that such a obvious (in retrospect ;) ) point was apparently not considered.

So now I'm wondering why this is only obvious once mentioned, and to what degree this sort of market/real-world ignorance features in various decisions about stating a business. You often don't know what you don't know, so how does one avoid these sorts of blinders?

One answer: try stuff where you can fail fast and (hopefully) cheap.

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Re:Hotelling’s Game, or Why Gas Stations Have Competitors Ne... by cagey on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @10:03PM (#2815064)

plays a role

Try "is 100% responsible for"; if (in CA, USA) I decided to defy or ignore the zoning bureaucracy and open a gas station (or any "bricks and mortar" business within city limits), I think the 'crats would apply "corrective measures" (up to and including jail time) within days (if not hours or minutes). Although in practice, they'd notice long before that I was missing the multitudinous appropriate permits, and bring my efforts to a crashing halt.

As to why this most obvious explanation was missed: maybe the authors have thus far in their lives avoided contact with such bureaucracies?

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Re:Hotelling’s Game, or Why Gas Stations Have Competitors Ne... by randallsquared on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @10:24PM (#2815103)

You copied the part of gparent's post that referred to game theory, not zoning.

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