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Comment by method_capital | Hacker News Reader

The answer is: nothing. The whole argument is predicated on a political conviction, not an economic reality.

This is naive and wrong. An example of this is Google Fiber and ironically Tesla. When Google Fiber came out, ISPs lobbied to sue Google and local governments to prevent Fiber from being available in their areas instead of competing. When Tesla tried to sell direct to consumer, dealerships sued to prevent it. Entrenched companies will always use the system to prevent competition. Regulatory capture is a term for a reason.

I doubt there are any regulatory or legal restrictions that prevent newcomers from selling frozen potatoes.

All of the FDA and USDA regulations and inspections.

...which even my local CSA seems to manage. Not saying there isn't a burden, but it's nothing like laying fiber or laws which specifically ban direct sales of automobiles.

If there was big money to be made undercutting Big Potato, someone would do it. Even my CSA grows potatoes.

The OP asked for examples of things that prevent ethical companies from outcompeting unethical ones and I provided a few. Hyper-focusing on potatoes doesn't invalidate that.

Your local CSA is also unlikely to be audited by the FDA unless they tried to go larger than your community.

Only argument I can think of is economics of scale. You need to have sufficient mass to enter the markets.

However even in this case customers, or Big Potato buyers, can simply ally and create a new supplier where they are shareholders.

Correct, which is why they agglomerated in the first place. Sectors where you see lots of agglomeration are ones where there are significant advantages to agglomeration.

And yeah, it’s hard to do once, but obviously it’s dramatically harder to do after someone has already done it.

Its interesting how the benefits seem to be dependent on market context. Go to the ralphs, its big potato no doubt. Go to the farmers market and people are there arguably to avoid big potato and big anything else for that matter.

You don’t think massive conglomerates have additional advantages they can deploy against competitors in order to retain their cartels?

Do you have some specific examples?

Oh sure: billions of dollars in cash? Hundreds of lawyers? Lobbyists on Capitol Hill? A buddy at USDA or EPA? Lower unit prices on just about every single thing they need to buy? Brand recognition? Strong negotiating positions in 100% of their deals?

Bundle web browser with your operating system.

Bundle operating system with CPU.

But, both lost in the end, despite abusing monopoly and government intervention did not really help.

No, abusing monopoly and government intervention didn't allow them to keep their monopoly forever. That is not the same as "did not help."

And in any case, no one is arguing conglomerated companies have no vulnerabilities or never lose.

I'm saying they have advantages, which is obviously true by the fact that conglomerated companies tend to dominate their sectors.

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