Comment by gpresot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gpresot | Hacker News Reader

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I would disagree. Conditions keep changing. keeping to the sectors you mentioned. Tesla and electric cars are clearly examples of innovation that was favoured by external elements (e.g growing concerns for climate / environment, increase of pollution in urban areas). In laundry detergents (and also personal care) , the big companies are racing to acquire small brands that were faster than them to go to market with more natural cleaning products (less chemicals, no parabens, traceable / sustainable ingredients...). Large Consumer Goods (P&G, Nestle...) companies are facing a backlash by consumers that are shifting to more local / smaller companies. This is more difficult in the automotive industry (there are some massive investment in assets that are simply impossible for companies that are not well funded). EDIT: I can not think of one segment where there are less products today than there were 30 years ago. Even when companies become fewer, they don't stop expanding and innovating the portfolio. The penalty for doing so would be either some competitor selling the same for less or selling something better.

The problem with many of the consumer brands, particularly cleaning and laundry, is the sheer amount of pointless innovation.

Convincing a generation that liquid soap is better than a simple bar, despite being vastly more wasteful in both product and packaging. Same for laundry in working to replace a cardboard box full of powder with all sorts of tablets, sachets and gels in plastic boxes. Or new recipes that replace original ingredients with super cheap palm oil or HFCS - sold for the same price. It's endless, and brands have burnt 95% of their former goodwill by being too damn clever for their own good.

Unless consumers are, in aggregate, entirely idiotic, buying up dozens of small brands won't pay off as they hope. We've had decades of large companies buying up brand and niche leaders and completely ruining the product in just a year or two. Leaves them cynically trading on the name only and damn near profiteering. Surely people are wising up to this finally? Success of discounters like Aldi and Lidl against major brands says they are.

> "Surely people are wising up to this finally? Success of discounters like Aldi and Lidl against major brands says they are."

Right. But the products themselves are essentially the same. And as mentioned, there can be competitive pricing, but that has its limits.

So back to my originsl question: What percentage of the economy can be fully and truly competitive? Or, have we, for a fair amount of the economy "maxed out"?

> What percentage of the economy can be fully and truly competitive?

You need to give us your definition of competitive. The grand parent already answered the examples you provided. The competing products being "essentially the same" does not detract from their competitiveness.

This is especially true. In fact, a "perfect competition" actually specifies homogeneous goods. Technically, differentiation (i.e. no longer just powder in a cardboard box) is what enables all the screwiness being discussed.

I'd say a good part has passed its limit and the results we see are proof of that. To stick with laundry, of all the brands seen in a supermarket, they are all made by just two multinationals. Washing isn't better or easier than when I lived with my first partner, in our first flat in the eighties. I can't ever remember anyone in all that time expressing a wish for better detergents, or struggling to get things clean enough. They've worked, essentially perfectly - or at least well enough, for nearly the whole time since WW2, maybe 50s or 60s on.

Washing machines, thanks to chasing low water and temperatures, have got markedly worse on the other hand. Nowadays overfilling a machine, even slightly, results in the wash deteriorating - machines didn't used to care in the slightest about that. Keep packing stuff in while it still fits and get perfect results. I have to wonder how many extra "eco" loads are run in order to wash the same household's weekly wash with a modern machine compared to an older, "wasteful" one. I wonder if per lb of washing if it is actually more wasteful. It lasts perhaps 10%-20% of the life of a machine made in the 70s or 80s. How does that impact per wash?

We've had a lot of fake brands and competition just to move balance in the markets from 50:50 to 51:49. More complexity, higher pricing, less competition and less for the consumer. Billions advertising these fake innovations to achieve, well, nothing but a hair's movement in favour of P&G or not. Back handed arrangements in the way supermarkets sell premium shelf spots, end of aisle displays and supplier priority again takes away from real competition and just leaves the appearance of it.

The simple soap, from the decades old small maker, becomes harder and harder to find despite working just as well, being popular, and generating perhaps 1% of the waste of a year's bottles of shower or hand gels. Eventually it disappears because of Tesco/Walmart and P&G/Unilver shelf selling arrangements not because it was wasn't selling, crap or superseded.

Car manufacture still has dozens (just) of manufacturers. There is still real competition and differentiation, despite no end of emissions and safety legislation.

Most categories today are like detergents, selling us fake innovation, differentiation and disruption and forcing us to more profitable but profligate and wasteful ways, not like cars where there actually still some real choices. Even down to the commodities like vegetables - we're sold a 1kg bag, rather than loose buying just the few we might need for a week, there's infinitely fewer varieties but so many more (fake) options. We're all markedly worse off as a result.

But. Remove electric and its the same car.

And yes. Tesla. But again, what % of the economy is that? I'm not saying there isn't change and innovation here and there. There is. But on the whole what percentage of the economy can be fully and truly competitive?

It depends on what you consider innovation. There are the big leaps, certainly (combustion engine, electric engine), but also the small increments: seat belts, automatic gears, runflat tyres, ABS, traction control, speed control... And these smaller innovations contribute to people picking one model or brand instead of another. Innovation also means producing the same thing at a lower cost (different process, better equipment, automation...). All this is competition. The Toyota quality management process was a revolution that led to japanese car companies becoming world leaders, with the same cars that everybody else were selling. Autonomous driving may be doing the same for some brands now.

> Remove electric and it's the same car.

What's your point? "Remove all innovations and nothing has changed for the better" is just tautological.

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