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Its good for the buyers, and good for broader society and the economy.

Its bad for vendors.

Why would vendors do something that is bad for them? HN is full for people talking about how to create a "moat" for their products. Why do you expect hardware vendors not to want to do the same?

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> Why do you expect hardware vendors not to want to do the same?

of course they want the moat - the point is that society as a whole should force them not to have a moat. Ala, they should not be allowed monopolies.

Unfortunately, this sort of legislation has been lacking recently, and in fact, has been failing even enforcing existing ones from yester-century.

This is true about most businesses, hence the dissonance. Pretty much every time a business creates "a moat", it's bad for consumers in some way.

Except if the moat is something like "have managed to attract and retain stellar workers who make fantastic products with excellent durability and support at a reasonable price, resulting in such a happy customer base that any upstart will struggle to gain a foothold". The horror!

If only it was possible to have that moat. Alas, optimizing quality of products and employment away is a competitive advantage.

Only because we let it be. I truly believe that we can wield regulations to make it not so.

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