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Comment by dluan | Hacker News Reader

Venture capital's failure to address this flaw in the past 3 decades has basically soured everyone - the fact that it's a great tool for handling high risk endeavors, and also happens to be an even better tool for finding and establishing monopoly. There's a very big blurry zone between the first check in the startup and the last check before IPO where this goal becomes more and more explicit. And eventually it gets to a point where it's like cancer, where monopoly only exists to ensure its own existence and starts to suffocate everything else around it.

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What monopolies have emerged out of venture capital in the last 3 decades? In any industry?

I am honestly not that surprised anymore to see that HN commenters don't remember Microsoft or Oracle antitrust suits, or how Twitter rose to prominence, or etc x 1000. Laughable.

Why use an ad-hominem that can only discredit the writer, 'dluan'?

It seems silly to waste reputation on something so menial.

It's not an ad-hom to point out that "Hacker News" used to be populated by Hackers, who maintained an ethos of trying to take on unfair players. Maybe it was too long ago.

If someone calls your commenting 'Laughable' that's not an ad-hominem?

Even under the most generous reading, if you want to make a point, then adding random noise isn't going to help.

> What monopolies have emerged out of venture capital in the last 3 decades? In any industry?

* Google with ad-tech

* Amazon ecomerce

* There is a beer oligopoly with four breweries and > 90% market between them

* In mu country there is a duopoly of supermarkets

That is off the top of my head.

Google doesn't even have 50% of the online ad market. Nor does Amazon even have 50% of the e-commerce market...

It's like saying Boeing has a monopoly on airplanes, when actually they can be said to have a local monopoly within a few hundred km of Seattle.

Amazon absolutely does have a monopoly, which has been evident in how their free shipping guarantee has warped prices to factor in the cost of shipping as a hidden fee (see: previous discussion [1]) across the board.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27333933

This doesn't prove that whatsoever. If you believe it constitutes as proof then can you demonstrate the line of reasoning?

Playing with words. Amazon has absolutely dominant power, as does Google. Boeing has a worldwide duopoly.

It's inconceivable that any forum dominantly by Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Eli Lilly, Visa, Novo Nordisk, Walmart, ExxonMobil, JP Morgan Chase, Johnson and Johnson, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC) is ever going to propose anything to threaten that power.

I'm using the dictionary definition. If you want to play with words, feel free.

Maybe study an econ textbook, too?

Playing word games and various other back and forth games is futile, but if you really want to...

was Microsoft a monopoly in 1998?

> Playing word games and various other back and forth games is futile...

You've already shown to be not entirely genuine in writing comments, so this seems like digging a hole. I'll give you another chance to come clean and engage productively, will you do so?

That WAS productive, but since you can't see it, there's probably no point in engaging with you any further. TTFN

People can tell when someone's not being entirely genuine in formulating questions... I don't want to burst your bubble but it really is just better to be upfront and genuine.

Maybe if you could stop being condescending I'd stop replying. Do you think you can handle that?

Just go away.

Huh? You were the one who initially replied to me... verify it yourself here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39035758

This might make sense if I was the one who wanted to engage first.. but it's just nonsensical in reality.

50% is already too large.

The problem is that if that dominant player does something (like raise prices), you cannot escape them. The rest of the market does not have the ability to absorb all the people who would like to flee the dominant player.

The problem is Always Late(tm) inventory combined with process optimization. No competitor has significant inventory or excess capacity, so nobody can respond to sudden consumer changes. Covid toilet paper shortages were a great example: industrial toilet paper suppliers were unable to deal with the shift to consumer and consumer toilet paper suppliers were unable to deal with the demand shock.

What the number should be is up to some interpretation, but I suspect that no market should ever allow a player with more than 25% market share no matter how you define "market".

That's a lot of literary devices.

Boeing's monopoly on airplanes was enough to shut down bombardier based in a different country

No? Nothing was 'shut down' for a single day from what I understand. Boeing had enough sway to make teaming up with Airbus, and eventually selling to them, attractive but it's bizarre to think they could physically 'shut down' production lines in other countries.

> Google doesn't even have 50% of the online ad market

IIRC Google controls about 90% of the online ad market out side the walled gardens like Facebook.

> What monopolies have emerged out of venture capital in the last 3 decades? In any industry?

I think you may be nitpicking more than necessary here.

If you change it from “monopoly” to “dominant player” or “duopoly”, then there are many candidates, and ones which are (imho) causing problems:

- Google with search, with Bing a distant second, and Kagi and DDG being whatever.

- Google with user-created video via YT. TikTok has created a space for itself (so duopoly?), but YT is the elephant in the room for video.

- Amazon (various parts), with Walmart trying to figure out how to compete.

- AirBnB, with VRBO being a distant second.

- Facebook… FACEBOOK!!! It may have competitors, but it is the only dominant player in its section of social media. Ditto with IG.

- Uber, with Lyft being likely a permanent second (if it is able to continue existing).

As someone who has done business with Amazon, Google search/ads, Google YT, and FB, I will just say that they don’t really act like they are threatened by any competition — they are more scared of government interference/regulation. The efficiency of rent-seeking on their platforms is both impressive and appalling.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but I’m guessing that they will be whacked with the regulation hammer in some way due to having too much unilateral sway on business interactions.

As a simple example of what it might look like, the US federal government knows that it has a lot of potential power in contract negotiations, so it puts a lot of rules on itself so that it’s much more difficult for that power to be abused.

I didn't comment on the categories of “dominant player” or “duopoly" ?

If you want to make a point about this instead, related topics, which companies fall into these buckets, etc., that's fine. But there's no need to disguise it.

> I didn't comment on the categories of “dominant player” or “duopoly" ?

Maybe you should have.

I get the feeling that you’re trying to win an argument over the use of the term “monopoly”, when what people are concerned about is anti-competitive behavior (which can happen in monopolies, duopolies, dominated markets, etc.).

As I mentioned before, fixating on the use of the term “monopoly” doesn’t accomplish much and seems to miss the overarching point of the discussion.

Anyone is free to 'fixate' on whatever topic they want? Just like how you can be 'fixating' on this?

There's not that many HN users who can change what someone else decides, and you don't belong in that category, hence my opinion is just don't disguise it under a different angle.

Otherwise, I simply don't care either way about those claims.

Abolish IP, enforce NDAs, and the problem is solved.

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