[not_wyoming]

> There is nothing preventing search companies paying the same $60 Million to license content.

Yes, actually, there is - having $60m to throw around.

"Barriers to entry often cause or aid the existence of monopolies and oligopolies" [0]. Monopolies and oligopolies are definitionally the opposite of free market forces. This is quite literally Econ 101.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry

[GuB-42]

Microsoft can throw around $60M, and Bing is used by most of the "alternative" search engines.

It doesn't solve the problem, but if money is the only thing preventing search engines from accessing Reddit, then what goes for Google also goes for Microsoft.

[superb_dev]

Cool, so the top two players are now the only players and everyone else is now trapped feeding off of them

[account42]

> Microsoft can throw around $60M, and Bing is used by most of the "alternative" search engines.

That's a symptom of the issue, not a solution. Bing is used because having your own crawler is infeasible, partially because you will be literally blocked in many cases.

[saghm]

Not to mention the fact that if this became commonplace, other websites might start charging as well

[try_the_bass]

And yet "free market forces" are often the reason why monopolies and oligopolies arise...?

Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics. After all, if there's clearly a "best product" for a particular niche, it's entirely rational (free market actor) behavior for everyone to use the same product, leading to its monopoly in that market segment.

I don't understand why people think this isn't/won't be/shouldn't be a common result of "free market forces".

[Newlaptop]

> Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics

Not in the least. Literally in the first semester, Economics 101 type class that any business/economics/etc student would take, it would be covered clearly that monopolies are violations of free markets.

A free market isn't a euphemism for anarchy or "no rules", it's a specific economic term. The things it is free of include artificial price floors or ceilings, barriers to entry, anti-competitive practices, etc. In other words, monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, monopsonies, etc are all violations of a free market. You do not have a free market if there is a monopoly supplier.

[try_the_bass]

Economics 101 also assumes perfect information symmetry, perfect competition, and spherical cows. In other words, it only vaguely models reality... Good enough to teach the basic concepts, but without diving in the nuance that makes the basic models break down.

If one competitor is far enough ahead of the rest, they can maintain that lead given that they can extract sufficient momentum from their early mover advantage. If they keep this up long enough, competitors never reach the scale to sufficiently prevent them from becoming a monopoly (at least over their local market segment).

None of this requires anti-competitive behavior; simply good execution on the part of the leader.

Unless, of course, you're suggesting that "free markets" also involve government intervention to suppress their lead in the market...

[animal_spirits]

And many times the sources of these monopolies come from special privileges given out by governmental authorities, such as the U.S. FDA

[account42]

Or even more basic government-enforced restrictions like IP laws. If you want a survival of the fittest anarchy economy then those won't exist either. Neither will legal protections against espionage or circumvention of whatever technical means you come up to try and get all that back.

[not_wyoming]

> Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics.

This is a fair critique. I'm approaching this from an admittedly American perspective in which "free market" colloquially implies competition - but I recognize that competition is not inherently a free market concept.

Good callout!

[zooq_ai]

Having a Monopoly != Anti-Competitive.

Having Barriers to Entry != Anti-competitive

Yes, large players have advantages of Economies of Scale.

Just because you can't run an Airline because you don't have money to buy an Airplane isn't anti-competitive.

Today Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI, Google, Amazon all can afford those piddly $60m to license from reddit.

Not Anti-competitive at all.

But saddened by how much corporate-hate by HNers destroys their credibility in debating these thing.

Go ahead downvote

[not_wyoming]

If you check citations, you'd find the sentence preceding my excerpt on barriers to entry:

"Because barriers to entry protect incumbent firms and restrict competition in a market, they can contribute to distortionary prices and are therefore most important when discussing antitrust policy."

Antitrust policy then links to a page on competition law: "Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies." [0]

So yes, I'd downvote you if I could, but HN doesn't allow downvotes - which is honestly pretty fitting in the context of this conversation.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

[nativeit]

I took care of the down vote for you. I dunno when the privilege is earned, but keep up the quality comments and you’ll be able to downvote incurious ideologues like this in no time!

[zooq_ai]

HN Downvotes on non-engineering things are my badge of honor. It has rewarded very well financially

[zooq_ai]

Once again buying an Airplane and starting an Airline business has probably the highest barrier to entry. Yet the Airline industry is the most competitive.

[not_wyoming]

The air travel industry has also seen some of the most significant government regulation in the form of blocking mergers (ie monopolistic, anticompetitive behavior) - meaning that competition in the airline space is due to regulation, not free market dynamics alone.

I’m happy to continue this debate if you’d like to start supporting your posts with citations but probably won’t engage further unless you do. Have a great day!

[stoperaticless]

Hm. Chip fabrication?

[animal_spirits]

Btw you will be allowed to downvote once you hit a certain karma threshold