[teddyh]

> So we're supposed to go use one of thousands of other tiny cloud platform providers?

Capitalism requires competition. If it’s only natural that one company grows larger and better than all others, then this is bad for consumers, and in this case bad for all of us, since it limits who can even be on the internet in any meaningful way.

[corytheboyd]

But doesn't competition... well, compete? That implies winners. There can only be so many winners.

I do not at all understand how anyone is walled off from being on the internet, if anything I feel like it's massively insanely easier to do that today than it was twenty years ago.

It's not like capitalism doesn't have its faults, but using competition to forge winners is literally what it's meant to do. At least in my very basic layman opinion.

[bombcar]

Competition can also result in multiple "winners" - especially when there is a product that could go two ways, so you have two companies that focus on the different ways.

Or when there's no real difference in product so there can't really be a winner (sugar water/Pepsi/Coke).

[skybrian]

There don’t need to be “winners” in every market. Consider the market for grain. Whether suppliers tend to centralize depends on market characteristics.

Keeping markets competitive often does require regulation. (For example, common carrier regulations.) Thriving markets don’t happen by accident; they are often tough to get going and don’t necessarily happen without a stable government that allows trade to happen.

[teddyh]

We only tolerate capitalism since it brings better results for consumers and society. If a “winner” is allowed to take over and have too much control, this condition fails, and it’s time to do some of: 1. break up monopolies, 2. regulate corporate behavior, and/or 3. nationalize industries. And let the cycle start again.

[corytheboyd]

Well, why hasn't that happened yet then? I'm all for dreaming about a utopic perfect world-- I too wish we could just have it. But here we are still, and it just doesn't seem to be changing.

I do think we should point the finger at companies like Amazon and Microsoft before Cloudflare though.

We would also likely not have those companies without capitalism to begin with. Or computers. Which actually sounds pretty nice... haha

[teddyh]

> Well, why hasn't that happened yet then?

It hasn’t happened because revolving doors, fascism, etc. The state, tasked with doing these things, is not doing them.

> I do think we should point the finger at companies like Amazon and Microsoft before Cloudflare though.

Luckily, I have more than one finger to point. There is certainly enough blame to go around. But if you try to argue against criticizing Cloudflare because others also deserve blame, then you’ve lost me.

[nicoburns]

> That implies winners.

It seems to me that competition does not imply winners. At least not permanent winners. The difference between capitalism and a traditional competition being that a traditional competition has an end point (at which point a winner can be declared), whereas capitalism has no ending point and thus can only have a winner for a time.

Imagine a sporting competition that started with 20 teams in a league and every year the bottom team was eliminated until after 19 years there was only 1 team left. We would not want to leave the competition in that state, we would want to introduce more teams to sustain a level of competition. And if the introduced teams consistently had no chance of winning due to the dominance of the top team, then we'd likely change the rules to level the playing field.