[–] cyberax 3 days ago
And once you're big enough, you can just offload your inefficiencies onto the consumer (the "enshittification" stage). As long as you're not _terribly_ bad, competitors won't be able to overcome your network effects.
What _really_ held companies from taking over the world was the inherent overheads of distributed corporate structures. Before computers, you couldn't really manage a horizontal company with offices in hundreds of different cities. Network effects were also less pronounced.
Internet-enabled companies like Google (or Yandex, Baidu, etc.) are a really great example. The early Internet was about as close to a perfect free market as possible. And in every case (Google in the US, Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China) the same thing happened: one large company ended up dominating and then gobbling up all the competitors.
[–] WalterBright 3 days ago
Why are the biggest companies of recent origin?
[–] cyberax 3 days ago
They never had a chance to expand in the post-computer era. GE was really close, but they switched to the "do everything" model a bit too early. Before computers, your only option was to have a financial stake in other companies, and this doesn't provide enough control.
As for IBM, I think it just lacks the ambition to do anything drastic. You don't get _automatic_ world takeover, you need to work for it. But others are giving a good run for it, just look at the recent acquisitions by Oracle.
[–] WalterBright 3 days ago
[–] cyberax 3 days ago
If you want to study the history of bureaucracy and business (an exciting topic!), it took about 20 years for companies to adapt their business processes to be typewriter-friendly. The key invention: short memos rather than long-form letters.
So yeah, my answer is that prior to the modern computer era, companies had a natural maximum limit on their complexity*size metric. This naturally limited the scope of world takeovers and made monopolies self-limiting in the long run.
These limits have now increased, and we're seeing companies taking advantage of that.
Some numbers: the largest unregulated (i.e. not AT&T) company in the pre-computer era was GM, peaking around 600k employees in the 80-s. Amazon has 1.5 million employees now. Walmart is about 2.1 million, Alphabet is at ~250k.
And these companies are not showing any signs of slowing their growth down.
[–] WalterBright 2 days ago
[–] cyberax 2 days ago
So let's invert your argument and try to find counterexamples.
Google is already close to 30 years old. It's not a new company. Microsoft is more than 50 years old! Do you have examples of large pre-computer-era companies that were at least this old and yet were able to successfully enter and expand in new markets? And not just by buying a stake in some company but incorporating new products into the parent company.
My fear is that AI will make that even more scalable, enabling even larger companies.
[–] harambae 3 days ago
[–] geraneum 3 days ago
[–] WalterBright 3 days ago
For example, the software industry. It's pretty much completely unregulated. Prices for software have gone to zero. Software engineers routinely become millionaires, and some billionaires.
[–] geraneum 3 days ago
Ad infinitum? No it doesn’t.
> Prices for software have gone to zero.
On earth?
> Software engineers routinely become millionaires, and some billionaires.
They don’t but if they did, this could mean the opposite of what you think it means.
[–] WalterBright 3 days ago
I didn't pay a cent for any of the software on my Linux machine. Free Open Source software is everywhere.
In the 1990s, the Seattle Times wrote that there were 10,000 Microsoft millionaires in the Seattle area, excluding the value of their homes.
Charles Simonyi became a billionaire as a Microsoft employee.
[–] Teever 2 days ago
At the same time I'm not sure that the computer industry is a good example for your claim due to its roots in the Bell telecommunication monopoly and the massive subsidies from the US military that lead to the wide availability of the cheap personal computers that most of the open source software that you are talking about originated from.
If anything the rise of American tech giants and the proliferation of cheap computers is directly attributable to decades of intervention by the US government and not a free market success story.
[–] WalterBright 2 days ago
Bell invented the transistor, not the government. The rest is history.
I am not aware of any subsidies that Microsoft, Apple, etc., received from the government, let alone massive subsidies. Intel received zero subsidies for the 8088 microprocessor, which really launched the computer industry. Not for the 286, 386, x86_64, etc., either.
> is directly attributable to decades of intervention by the US government
Oh come on. I've been in this business for 50 years, with zero government intervention (other than I pay my taxes).
DEC (maker of the famous PDP-10 and PDP-11) did not get subsidies from the government, although it sold equipment to the government.
> I'm not seeing the connection between a relative lack of regulation in the software industry and the price of FOSS software being (close to) zero
Regulations are a massive cost to industry. There are no regulations on software development. I don't have to get a permit to write software, or sell it. I do not need a license. I do not need any government approvals. I do not need any certifications. Anybody with a keyboard can write software and make it available under any terms they want (usually free!).
Has the government paid for any of this FOSS software? I've never received a dime from the government for my 26 year efforts in making FOSS software.
> or your larger assertion regarding free markets and prosperity in general.
The most prosperous economies in history and the world come from free markets, not socialist ones.
[–] lovich 2 days ago
The field may mint millionaires at a higher rate but it’s still not routine.
[–] dbetteridge 3 days ago
Lack of regulation in tech causes real harm, like addiction, social issues and misinformation,not to mention issues with cyber bullying and suicide in teens.
Do some people make out like bandits with billions or millions of dollars, sure but I don't think that's a good barometer for progress or prosperity.
To paraphrase Doctor Who "Human progress isn't measured by industry, it's measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege"
And by that measure we are still cavemen.
[–] WalterBright 3 days ago
None of those had effective regulation.
Regulation against fraud does work, but the job of government is to prevent crime, enforce contracts, and stop fraud, in a free market.
> And by that measure we are still cavemen.
Government is not going to fix that.
> Do some people make out like bandits with billions or millions of dollars, sure but I don't think that's a good barometer for progress or prosperity.
In the 1800s the US lifted scores of millions of people out of poverty into the middle class.
[–] vconnor 3 days ago
The free market has its flaws, but many blame it for the ills caused by corruption and lobbying of politicians.
There has never been a truly free market anywhere in the world, let alone ‘pure’, so I don’t see why you use this adjective at all.
[–] alasdair_ 3 days ago
[–] WalterBright 3 days ago
[–] win311fwg 3 days ago
However, what we do know is that a free market requires management people today aren't accustomed to. Suddenly you are fully responsible to negotiate protection, transit, etc. That is a burden many would find off-putting and, in many cases, something beyond their capabilities.
If we were magically dropped into a free market tomorrow it is likely we would quickly attach ourselves to whomever is willing to give us those things without needing extra thought, just like the monopoly does today, and – tada – we're right back to the way things are right now.
If we were born into a free market and didn't know anything else then monopolies might be harder to pull off. That said, while the initial conditions were a bit different, we've been in a similar situation before and the monopoly won in the end.
[–] WalterBright 2 days ago
[–] win311fwg 2 days ago
[–] WalterBright 2 days ago
There's a continuum between free markets and socialism. It is not a binary thing. Nothing human is perfect. You might as well claim there is no such thing as water because 100% water is not achievable (there are always contaminents).
Also, a free market requires a government. The role of government is to protect life, liberty, and property.
[–] win311fwg 2 days ago
Uh, what? That's like saying there is a continuum between cold and far. Your comparison points are not in the same realm. Consider a free market where all actors decide to form cooperatives. That, however unlikely in practice, would result in both free markets and socialism at the same time. A free market does not care about how the people decide to divvy up capital. The people deciding to share ownership in the capital is perfectly valid within a free market. If "free market" was prescriptive about how people must trade then it would be completely contradictory.
> Also, a free market requires a government. The role of government is to protect life, liberty, and property.
Absolutely not. In a free market, one negotiates with private vendors to offer these services. A government is the antithesis of a free market, being a monopolistic vendor that you don't get to opt out of. A voluntary organization could emerge in a free market to provide those services to those who wish to join without having to individually negotiate, which would closely resemble the governments we know, but key is that it membership is optional. What makes a government more than an association is that you don't get to choose. The market cannot be free if you cannot choose who to buy from.
You could more reasonably say that there is a continuum between free markets and planned economies. It is still flawed as none of this is one-dimensional, but for the sake of simplification we can run with it. The space between is referred to as mixed economy, not free market.
[–] win311fwg 3 days ago
How? If a monopoly were to emerge in what was a pure free market, it would become the government, and its rules would become regulation on the market. And thus the pure free market could no longer exist. Monopolies and free markets cannot coexist.