[deadbabe]

If you can manipulate the market why not do it?

Literally no one benefits from the alternative.

[sph]

Manipulation of the market never comes for free.

You just delay, and render unpredictable, the eventual reckoning, for short-term benefits.

It will be interesting to see who’s gonna blame the free market when that day arrives.

[Supermancho]

> You just delay, and render unpredictable, the eventual reckoning, for short-term benefits.

After a century, those short-term benefits add up to a long term benefit.

[throwaway132448]

> Literally no one benefits from the alternative.

Future you might disagree with present you. But even if we disregard time, I think millions of consumers would benefit from the opportunity to have competitive markets again. If an actual economic forest fire was allowed to burn, we might eliminate some of the too-big-to-fail corruption and oligopoly that is the norm now and provide space for new seeds to grow.

[deadbabe]

You can’t have competition forever. At some point someone wins decisively, and then there is only the illusion of competition.

[hilariously]

We already have anti-trust and other regulation to manage this problem, we simply need to use it.

There's no end of competition, the world changes, companies bloat and make bad choices, smaller competitors can react and change faster - it's only in our corporate hegemony that we don't consider that a viable alternative.