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by TeMPOraL
965 days ago
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> This normally turns out be more expensive and have less quality in the products at the same time. Hypothesis: software market has near zero barriers to entry, so while other industries are protected from would-be competitors by large up-front expenses, for most purely-software products anyone can rapidly build a half-assed clone of whatever you're doing and start eating into your customer base - making software companies obsess over velocity / feature delivery rate, and/or seeking all kinds of non-software barriers to entry (e.g. network effects, or content deals - like, it wouldn't be hard to make a better Spotify client, but good luck replicating the deals Spotify has with recording labels). |
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Hypothesis 2: this is why you have a lot of anti-capitalistic talk among tech folk.
The whole concept of "anyone can replicate my product, but I got here first, so i have to use lock-ins and other ethically questionable things if I want to keep my spot" is antithetical to the goals of capitalism i.e companies out-competing each other constantly, leading to better and better products.
The equilibrium with monopolies that is possible under capitalism is reached really, really easily in tech. Because being a monopoly/locking-in, not open sourcing, etc, is the only way you can be a big tech company.
In my opinion, industries with low barriers of entry are fundamentally incompatible with - atleast the current flavor of - capitalism, if you use user harm as the metric.