| Its the McDonaldization problem[1] that sociologists used to talk about when McDonalds was conquering the world. And then they stopped talking about it, cause no one has come up with a model that not just survives side by side, but replaces the McDonalds model. Everyone just ends up copying that model, cause it did produce results no one had seen before. Laws and regulations evolve to help that model out. Investing more and more in that model becomes automatic. Restaurant count kept multiplying, franchises were willing to spend more and more on the best real estate with highest foot traffic UPFRONT. Costs of running things kept falling, thanks to all these accumulating network effect/economies of scale. Price stays low. All fantastic right? To the point people started asking why can't the McDonalds model feed the world? And naturally anyone who was very happy with their profits and fries would start assuming it could. Only once you start digging into that question, do you start seeing how their success at optimizing for a few specific variables really well, comes at the cost of all the other things they don't optimize for. Their success is not possible without rising external costs. As a reaction there are nows lots of restaurants that survive with alternative models that optimize for other things. But no one has taken down the McDonalds model yet. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwvL6XDq0BQ |