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Comment by jntvjnvutnuvt | Hacker News Reader

Which industries with big capital requirements don't have competitors?

Anything with a natural monopoly.

Utilities (water, electric, telephony/cable/data services) or where having two of something makes no sense given physical limitations (Transportation sector, etc.)

You're right but the person is talking in the context of competition and how competition doesn't reduce profit margins "for industries with big capital requirements."

Banking! If there are meaningful competitors then that implies there is meaningful competition. But many financial services firms have been making huge windfall profits by creating a wide interest rate spread even though they would still be (very) profitable with much lower spreads and their customers have a clear incentive to go with a competitor offering a better interest rate. So clearly there is not effective competition in this market.

Well, there are thousands of banks in the US alone that offer mortgages and loans.

And that number has been steadily trending down with mergers and acquisitions.

And are they offering them at competitive rates or are they all mysteriously making enormous profits despite the "competition"? Because in much of Europe it's definitely the latter that is happening. There are lots of banks but evidently they are not really competitors.

In the US: ISP & Healthcare

Most Americans have access to AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile. They also have a choice of insurance plans and healthcare providers.

But will their choice of health insurance provider be accepted at the hospital an ambulance took them to? Who knows but for that person, its time to play bankruptcy roulette.

Many healthcare plans cover emergency out of network hospitals.

Spinning that roulette wheel I see.

Love when people prove the point while trying to refute it.

Many, and not all?

What a wild system you have.

Didn't the no surprises act change that for emergency issues? The insurer has to cover it as in plan.

> AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile.

These are mobile providers. For home internet with a physical connection you usually don't have a choice and it is not outlandish to consider them a "natural monopoly" like you would electricity and water.

And in cases where there are competitors, they'll often have similar prices for similar offerings, with equally poor service or reliability.

After all, if you're Time Warner, you could compete with Verizon by improving your infrastructure or lowering your prices, but that would spur them on to do the same thing, and then it's a race to the bottom where "everybody loses" (by which I mean consumers win a bit more and corporations win a bit less).

If you instead take the gentleman's agreement to not make any substantial changes, then you both get to gouge customers for poor service as much as you want, keeping profits high without having to do any work to maintain it. Sure, you might lose some customers to your competitor, but they also lose customers to you and everyone is happy (except the customers).

Most Americans have access to one "high-speed" (50Mbps+) provider, and then maybe one low-speed (<15MBps) provider, and maybe one dish option. It's not competition if the product isn't comparable.

Social networks, search engines.

Those have low capital requirements, but their moat is the network effect....

I can buy a script to build a Facebook clone from an Indian Dev for like $50.

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