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Comment by intelVISA | Hacker News Reader

Is the market really free enough for WFH vs RTO to be visible?

As far as I know, there aren't any regulations about WFH vs RTO.

Regulation isn't the only thing that can make a market unfree. For example, some of the players in the market could be big enough to exert market power.

The history of business is that companies rise to dominance, are characterized as having unstoppable monopolies, and then they fall. The US business history is full of examples. Like IBM. Walmart. RCA. GE. Cisco Systems. Intel. Ford. AT&T.

The only way dominance can be sustained is by using the government to throttle the competition.

Monopolies don't need to be eternal to be a monopoly. They will fail when they make a mistake or become obsolete. What they won't do is lose to a competitor on their own terms.

For instance, IBM is a recognized mainframe monopoly. They are not valuable today not because they lost the mainframe dominance, but because mainframes are obsolete (or almost).

Microsoft outmanuevered IBM multiple times. IBM tried to dominate the PC business, was successful for a few years, and then failed.

> What they won't do is lose to a competitor on their own terms.

Markets are always changing. Large companies tend to optimize for a particular market, and when it inevitably changes, they cannot adapt and get left behind. Often its their competitors that change the market.

See the classic book "The Innovators' Dilemma".

(The same thing happens in nature when a species over-specializes to a particular niche.)

I'd compare it to dictatorships: In the long run all dictatorships have failed. However, that doesn't mean that they don't cause immense damage in the medium term, that we shouldn't fight against them, or that they don't have significant influence upon society.

No because switching costs are too high which distorts the market.

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