> Why couldn't this have been done through market competition?
There are a ton of problems that can't be solved through market competition.
There are a ton of problems that can't be solved through market competition.
in theory it could have been solved by a more competitive market.
I believe most shortfalls in our current market economy stem from a lack of competition and then subsequent cartel style collusion for the few big players, high barriers to entry that are fortified through regulatory capture, and a tendency for lots of small players in tight competition to consolidate over time into fewer bigger players. (I think we need to disincentiveze consolidation in all but the most egregious cases of natural monopolies like most public utilities)
this answers so many questions from "why is it so hard to work on my new car" to "why do my tennis shoes wear out so fast".
there are also cultural factors. people using the tools aren't the same craftsmen who build, repair, and sell them. each of these disciplines is now siloed and few companies are putting real effort into considering this holistic lifecycle view of their products.
then when these options do exist people may not be aware, or obtaining them is more immediately expensive or less convenient in the short term. or they simply don't care.
That set of problem is indeed enormous. I'm not arguing otherwise. But there is also an enormous set of problems that can't be solved by more competition, but people put forth "more competition" as a solution anyway.
Increasing competition is valuable, but it's not a panacea.
I'm far from convinced that this particular problem can be solved by more competition for a few reasons, but the primary one is this: the established players have shown that behaving this way will maximize profit. New players in the space have a greater economic pressure to do the same than to do differently.
Thing is, farmers already have their John Deere tractors, and, just like Apple sucks you into their ecosystem and soon every tech thing you own is an Apple product, so does John Deere. The switching cost is just too high, especially for a whole farm's equipment that you buy and keep/use for 15 years. The first iphone is just older than that. So you buy a tractor in 2008, it's only just now time to replace that tractor, but in the interim you've bought all of the special dongles, at $50k-$300k a pop, are you really going to switch tractor manufacturers? You could, we're talking about farm equipment, not mini DVI dongles, but you really want your hardware to work together, and it's going to take you another 15 years to fully divest yourself of the Apple, err John Deere ecosystem. But you're already 40, having inherited the family farm when you were 25. Another 15 years and you'll be 55, and it'll be time for retirement soon enough. So you just keep buying John Deere products and hope the corporate farms don't get you before then.
I know government regulations are anathema to some, but they're anathema because they really do force somebody's hand, and change things. Sometimes, even for good.
and
> market problem
are two different classes of problems.