Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jeauxlb 346 days ago
You might be conflating capitalism (owning things like factories) with consumerism (buying things like widgets).

If all of the factory owners discover a type of widget to sell that can incidentally drive down wages the more units they move, it's unlikely for consumers to be provided much choice in their future widgets.
1 comments
AstroBen 346 days ago
The lowest cost (either purchase price, or to produce) products don't create a monopoly

$30 blenders that break in 3 months haven't bankrupted Vitamix

link
jeauxlb 346 days ago
Search, music streaming, books: heavily consolidated markets where the value-based offering has supremacy (Google vs any paid search; Spotify/Apple Music vs Tidal; Amazon vs anything). It's the market supremacy that generally allows this.

If quality were a sufficiently motivating aspect, Google's deteriorating search wouldn't be a constant theme on this site, and people on the street would know where to download and play a FLAC file.

link
brookst 346 days ago
Tidal is a great example. They seem do be doing fine with a niche. If more people wanted what they offer instead of Spotify, Tidal would eat market share.
link
AstroBen 346 days ago
The market supremacy came afterwards, not before. Most people don't want the expensive premium version - they want good enough at a low investment. And that's fine

There's also a segment of the market that wants the FLAC, premium handcrafted experiences at top price. They're not in direct competition and both can co-exist

My initial point was that companies can't just exploit consumers relentlessly because the market won't let them. The good value option can't just box people in and show them only ads. I bet YouTube would love to show you unskippable ads for 75% of the video length. Good luck staying market leader with that

I don't think Google is a good example here. They've been actively trying to fight and failing against SEO and affiliate spam for a decade. No-one else has solved that problem either which is why Google remains at the top. I personally had a hand-crafted content site thrown out of their search results because of them going after spam

link