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by Sevaris
2210 days ago
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> It's as if the culture of every business has become captivated by the idea of becoming an oligopoly. My guess is because it's extremely attractive -- once you "make it" you don't have to compete any more. You say this like it's new. US anti-trust law started in the late 1800s because of a slew of consolidation in the railroad industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_competition_law... The UK has had legislation to control monopolies for hundreds of years. |
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Of course railroads, oil, and steel were the first groups who naturally thought, "wouldn't it be great if we were the only people doing this, and we didn't have to deal with other people competing?" Since those businesses are big by their nature (capital intensive, worldwide market, often working directly with national governments).
But now this attitude is everywhere. Dog walking, taxicabs, office space. Not to mention the traditional areas like insurance, healthcare, telecom, etc. It seems like everyone, across every sector, is trying to merge and congeal into a single blob that extracts a reliable stream of money each month. Those who aren't already around are trying to skip the "make a good/valuable business" part and skip straight to the money extraction step. And I think in many places, businesses are way more focused on this than on actually doing or providing valuable services/things for people.
I'm speaking in really broad terms here. The cultural focus seems to have shifted from "how can we make the best product" to "how can we guarantee payment every month by consolidating/merging."