Re:"No inventions; no innovations" A History of US Steel
by AnthonyMouse on Saturday December 30, 2023 @03:01AM
(#38813555)
> This was especially true through the 80's and 90's in a post "stagflation" atmosphere a lot of industry became more focused on executive pay than product production.
Really the thing that does this is market concentration. You have only three major companies in an industry and they can play "conscious parallelism" games to avoid competing with each other while pointing to the others as ostensible competition to fend off antitrust allegations.
Then because they're not actually subject to competitive pressure, they stagnate, and as soon as anyone else shows up who hasn't forgotten how to satisfy the customer, the incumbents start to crumble.
It isn't a coincidence that the article is about something similar happening to US Steel, the infamous former monopolist.
Really the thing that does this is market concentration. You have only three major companies in an industry and they can play "conscious parallelism" games to avoid competing with each other while pointing to the others as ostensible competition to fend off antitrust allegations.
Then because they're not actually subject to competitive pressure, they stagnate, and as soon as anyone else shows up who hasn't forgotten how to satisfy the customer, the incumbents start to crumble.
It isn't a coincidence that the article is about something similar happening to US Steel, the infamous former monopolist.