Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

It's also just a total pain in the arse.

I have no interest in repeatedly shopping around for new providers for things like energy, telecoms, savings accounts and so on. I just want to give a company money in exchange for services and have them continue to provide that service with reasonable increases in price as inflation happens. I feel like I'm constantly being bullshitted – "Good news, we're reducing your savings interest rate!".

View on HN

Companies understand this, that's why you get to pay them a little more for the convenience of not having to shop around.

Then there's a leveraged buyout/new CEO and the rates start creeping up. Initially things are great for shareholders, then they go bankrupt.

see, the comfort of not having to shop around provides value to you. feels much more comfy now, doesn't it? ;)

Yes, but it's a deadweight loss, waste that provides no value to anyone. It's a breakdown of trust leading to market failure. It would be better if the waste was converted to economic profit and the difference split between vendor and client.

Competition will solve that. It becomes a problem when you have no effective alternative.

Not to be a cliche of a tech community comment…

but… this will be the primary usecase of blockchain projects.

Players on markets agreeing to use one common protocol and compete for prices in real time.

It won't be the incumbent who wants to do this or change. (it never is) It will be the powerlaw distributed Number 3 to 99 who together are alone barely competitive but together as interesting as the main incumbent.

Dream on :-)

None of that has anything to do with blockchain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com