Hacker News Reader

Comment by nothercastle | Hacker News Reader

Duopoly on elevators means no competition. Duopoly exists due to excessive regulation. Some regulation is good but sometimes it gets out of hand and no competition is possible

View on HN

From the (extremely brief) article it sounds like the problem isn't excessive regulation, but a lack of broad standards. I.e. a point against federalism and Nixon's axing of federal building codes.

Each state carries it's own regulations and many have numerous code books for grandfathered systems to the new modern systems. The sad part is many elevators stay in a sad state of repair because an overhaul would also require it meet all new code, which is vastly more restrictive to the hardware and safety designs. Its a gridlock that is controlled by the big elevator companies.

A few years ago, UCSD finished building a new parking garage next to the building I worked in. It wasn't open for more than a month or two before both elevators had to be taken out of service. I spoke to the technicians on the top deck-there were cables being taken out of both shafts...apparently, the new elevators used synthetic (polyaramid?) core rope; whereas the CA regs specified steel wire rope only. Took like two weeks to get everything replaced, and I'm pretty sure they couldn't reuse the stuff they took out....

So CA regs had an extremely clear specification and the builders didn't follow it?

Why not? Never mind that steel cables have been standard in elevators for literally a hundred years, have never had any systemic problems, and aren't expensive.

I guess. It may have been a county thing; but it was the first time I'd ever heard of elevator cables being made out of anything but wire rope.

Duopoly’s produce excessive regulation as a means of protection.

Duopolies grow out slow growth, once the pie stops growing stealing customers is hard and is a zero sum game, reaching a comfortable stasis which then becomes the status quo is how organisms in these environments behave

> comfortable stasis

man, someone needs to disrupt the elevator business.

For example, why can't personal homes have elevators? The arguments of older people not being able to take stairs or getting hurt apply at home.

Or maybe busboys for groceries from the garage to the kitchen? Make them go sideways like the enterprise (the ncc-1701 enterprise)

Home elevators are a thing. We had one in our previous house, as did many other homes in the neighborhood. They are not terribly expensive, about $12k/floor during construction.

Not the US, but my dad just got one installed in his two story home, cost him around US$25k for installation of the lift/elevator itself, although he incurred a few grand more on modifications to create a space to install it in (would have been more but he did some of them himself). Not a new house, around 40-50 years old. In part, he got the idea because one of his neighbours had already done it. Plus his partner has dementia and climbing stairs has been becoming an ever increasing challenge for her.

We saw a new house with an elevator when we were looking, but it seemed to be an accessibility quota thing, I don’t want to think what it costs to maintain and what kind of inspections it needs.

Generally home eaevators are made of things that don't need inspections. Screws will last for decades without issues and when they fail rescue workers can get you out. Those systems are too slow and expensive for use commercial buildings but good enough for a short house. Thus commercial buildings will use a cable which is cheaper and faster but they stretch and break over time so you must do safety inspection. (a house sized screw is under a grand so not really a big factor in price, but that much cable will get several floors.

some commercial builings use hydraulic elevators which when they break just slowly lower you to the bottom floor . Again much less inspections needed because they are desirned safe. but the slow speed and cost mean only a few floors are possible

Cable systems are not cheap. The biggest issue with cables is the cores dry out. Hydraulic doesn't have to be slow by any means and they dont just seep down unless you blow a seal on the cylinder. Even then it would take an hour under a full load to move a story. Thats a lot of hydraulic fluid to displace. Hydraulic elevators are also prone to issues with cold temperature as the oil can become quite viscous when not in regular use.

I was thinking a hose break not a seal which would fall much faster. Which is why you would design them slow - if a hose breaks they are still a safe fall. (of course if you make them fast then you need more inspection, a trade off)

That said I'm not an elevator expert. The details I've given so far is about all I know. So if/when someone claims to be an expert and contradicts me - well they could be right.

Maintenance was essentially zero. No regular official inspections needed, but we had an elevator company come out every 3-4 years for a general inspection. Ours was a 3 story hydraulic unit.

I would ask kindly that nobody 'disrupt' the elevators I use to go into work.

How can a duopoly produce regulation? That'd be straight out corruption unless someone came up with a new word for it that suddenly made that legal, moral, and efficient.

Lobbying has a pretty pronounced effect and is completely legal

What duopoly? Just off the top of my head, there is at least Schindler, Otis, Kone, Toshiba, ThyssenKrupp, and Mitsubishi.

They're all very expensive systems that lock you into contracts. No one outside of their offices are allowed to service them and if you dont like it, you can buy a controller overhaul from any of the other big guys. Thyssen had some horrible controllers in the 90s and upkeep on those flaky things was criminal. Not a duopoly, more like a lightbulb cartel.

they are very expensive, because the are all custom built, and need engineering drawings, while bieng regulated under the whims of the local building code....industry. The reality is that elevators are not "cut to length" from a big block of elevator stuff, and the machines with longer travels at greater speeds will have(almost) no comanality with lower,slower instalations. And very much like aviation, someone has to keep track of each registered elevator, the engineering drawings, parts lists, drawings for the parts, service procedures, testing and certification. And like say: doing a hot upgrade swap, on the OS, for a major telecom, downtime is taboo. Its not just a door, with a box and some rope.

> Duopoly exists due to excessive regulation.

Or some things are simply hard.

Counterpoint: VISA and Mastercard.

The tech isn’t too hard.

Getting billions across many different cultures to trust you with money is hard.

They have numerous competitors, from American Express to PayPal. Even crypto could be a competitor. But they have trust problems, are too expensive, or provide no benefit to the purchasers.

Credit cards in general are hard to disrupt as they pay a substantial kickback to the people who would otherwise be adopters of a new technology.

As a high income, technologically savvy, globally mobile person, I am who a payment company would need to flip to drive broad global payment adoption. Unfortunately for them, credit cards are enormously valuable to me as is due to points and perks.

The legal compliance issues are probably just as hard as establishing trust.

The trust is also hard because it are selling at 30-100 year product. If your company goes bankrupt than they buyer might be forced to spend a lot of money replacing the elevator. Think fiskar electric cars except much more expensive and harder to replace.

No, as the alternatives are in the market, so they have solved the compliance issues (sufficiently at least to avoid getting shut down). It is simply that they cannot get customers onboard.

In other words, excessive regulation makes the trustworthiness hard.

How does excess regulation keep PayPal from being a payment alternative? People can currently use PayPal to do business if they wish. You could take PayPal transfers at a grocery store.

There is a case for regulation blocking crypto in some areas, but certainly not all and it still has yet to find meaningful traction as a payment processing mechanism.

With credit cards it is more so lack of regulation. With low enough caps on fees it is lot less of an problem. Still should mandate them to serve all customers. And only kick them out after certain fraud threshold.

Many companies are capable of doing hard but navigating vague and complex regulations requires deep pockets and institutional connections. In theory the regulations are the same for everyone but because they are often vague regulators have broad interpretation powers. Established players have favorable agreements in place with regulators on how to interpret these regulations that new entrants would not and would have to spend years negotiating these rules. That requires really deep pockets like uber level capital.

It isn't that nobody else can it is that navigating them the first time costs alot and so you need to do many to ammortize the costs over. Cars are very regulated but humans buy enough that you can start a new company anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com