Is competition dead?

PizzaW0lf

In search of something greater.
Joined
Jul 16, 2022
Messages
426
Reaction score
1,079
Awards
121
When it comes to cultural changes I've had this big question on my mind about the current state of competition in our market society.

So, is competition in our current market dead? And if so what happened?

To start the reason why I'm asking has to do with my general disenfranchisement of our current market. Now for some history, it's interesting to see how firms and companies did actually try to compete with each other. Like how you see the apple vs. Microsoft ads but what exactly happened to that? I was always under the premise that a capitalist free market system, would harness the Darwinistic character of fitness and being the best. But all I see nowadays are these massive companies doing some of the most embarrassing decisions in my life but why? Why don't they WANT to make something better? There's almost this sort of new attitude of no competition but we're just friends. So instead of direct competition, it's more like a weird cold war where companies want to make something better but they also don't care to do so because why should they?

The problem I largely have is that I don't think companies have to suck or be bad but the lack of competition can really let the companies we hate abuse their power and not focus on being better than another company which is a shame.

I personally have my own theories and this issue is surprisingly complex. In short, I think this has more to do with how we're economically living in a monopolistic competitive era. High barriers to entry, and nonprice competition.

I've always wanted to ask this since joining too since I find that competition was noticeably stronger in past decades. But I could be wrong.

Basically, I just miss stuff like this


View: https://youtu.be/0eEG5LVXdKo
 
Last edited:
Virtual Cafe Awards

RisingThumb

Imaginary manifestation of fun
Joined
Sep 9, 2021
Messages
713
Reaction score
1,745
Awards
173
Website
risingthumb.xyz
Lets analyse it from the market. Consider a monopoly- there's an insane amount of policies preventing monopolies coming to power. Now next consider a duopoly, a duopoly serves a very good financial function for the greater and lesser entity in it. As a result, both maintain a peace as both serve each other to maintain a status quo, and actually steer it towards their own benefit in a mutually beneficial way. As a result, you actually SEE COOPERATION due to fear and cost of competition, because if you're too competitive that your opponents are beat out, you will be broken up due to being a monopoly.

You can also see this mutually beneficial relationship in European wars. It's always in Britain's interest to prevent one power becoming dominant in Europe, so Britain always aligned with the losing side, as to prevent European hegemony, both by the French, by the Germans(both German Unification and in WW1/WW2), and further back too. Cooperation arises with mutual benefits that outweigh competition.

Also consider it from a game theory point of view- maybe the prisoner's dilemma. For 1 iteration, it's ALWAYS WORTHWHILE COMPETING AND CHEATING THE ENEMY. But over many iterations, cooperation beats out.

Tit-for-tat

Edit Adendum:
This is also why Duopolies are much harder to break up, and much more dangerous since the status quo is not necessarily the greatest thing, since it's only a locally optimal result - you can't tell if it's a globally optimal result(since you could see a lot of things from it as a linear equation with billions of variables that affect it)
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Jade

Shameless Germaniboo
Joined
Aug 8, 2021
Messages
660
Reaction score
1,890
Awards
194
Website
idelides.xyz
When it comes to cultural changes I've had this big question on my mind about the current state of competition in our market society.

So, is competition in our current market dead? And if so what happened?

To start the reason why I'm asking has to do with my general disenfranchisement of our current market. Now for some history, it's interesting to see how firms and companies did actually try to compete with each other. Like how you see the apple vs. Microsoft ads but what exactly happened to that? I was always under the premise that a capitalist free market system, would harness the Darwinistic character of fitness and being the best. But all I see nowadays are these massive companies doing some of the most embarrassing decisions in my life but why? Why don't they WANT to make something better? There's almost this sort of new attitude of no competition but we're just friends. So instead of direct competition, it's more like a weird cold war where companies want to make something better but they also don't care to do so because why should they?

The problem I largely have is that I don't think companies have to suck or be bad but the lack of competition can really let the companies we hate abuse their power and not focus on being better than another company which is a shame.

I personally have my own theories and this issue is surprisingly complex. In short, I think this has more to do with how we're economically living in a monopolistic competitive era. High barriers to entry, and nonprice competition.

I've always wanted to ask this since joining too since I find that competition was noticeably stronger in past decades. But I could be wrong.

Basically, I just miss stuff like this


View: https://youtu.be/0eEG5LVXdKo

Competition was always doomed to end in the way it used to exist, for the simple reason that shareholder profit is considered (by law, even!) the sole purpose of a publicly traded company. For X company, having a monopoly on something is always going to be better than competing against Y company, and vice versa. So what happens is a kind of unspoken agreement between these corporations: X company will not attempt to compete with Y company in area A, and Y company won't try to compete with X company in area B. The was done most fervently with telecommunications companies for a long time, but an easier to understand example would be Microsoft allowing Xbox exclusives like Cuphead to be sold on the Nintendo eshop, because the way Microsoft sees it, they don't compete with Nintendo. This sort of thing is being done to a more and more extreme extent across just about all financial field - large companies simply agree not to compete, allowing for soft monopolies to form within specific sub-sectors of a market. Any smaller companies or start up that attempt to disturb this balance are ruthlessly crushed, which is much easier now that smaller companies can't leverage competition between large companies to create a niche for themselves.

TL;DR Finance is gradually reaching a point where major corporations simply won't tolerate competition anymore. It's much easier just to create multiple soft monopolies within specific market niches and agree not to interfere with the soft monopolies of your supposed competitors as long as they don't interfere with yours.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
Joined
Aug 29, 2021
Messages
3,090
Reaction score
25,774
Awards
352
So, is competition in our current market dead? And if so what happened?
It is not dead, in any case it got worse, people now compete about not only material stuff, but status, and appearence aswell, everything can be a competition, the thing is to know when to balance competition and cooperation, because nowadays being the best isn't enough, you also need to learn how to be a part of a team.

let's just say, a company that makes a software, most engineers lack the aesthetic, artistic and psychological knowledge, they are too straightforward and think of art as either a enthropism or as an "objective discipline in which you had to follow the theory to do the praxis" but they are absolutely necessary to create the code of the software, that logical and scientific and straightforward thinking is what is necessary for the program to work and to perfect the software, think about them as the bones.

We designers lack mathematical knowledge, we are dumb as a rock when is about coding (that is not html), we don't have the logical thinking to make a program work, or we lack the theoric knowledge to make something out of a software code, we aren't straightforward at all and logic is at second hand when is about art, we are focused in designing the presentation of the UI, the marketing, the way we sell the product and how to give them to the public, we think outside the box and go to a more abstract line of thinking, is never straightforward if you want to make something look good, think out of the conventional, designers are the skin of the project.

And there is the people in finances , who hold the accountability of the project, they are the muscle of the operation, they reach the contracts, they sell the products, they make the budget and basically how we are gonna pretend to show the product the public, they are the ones who show our product to investors and the public, they are not only resourceful but quite charismatic aswell, they have the mentality to make you hear what you want, and convince us as the sole option for this type of software, think of them as the muscle.

CEO's are the brain, basically, every part is necessary for a good job and product, think about a company as Human body, healthy competition is great, specially if it is a self competition to be better and better in comparasion to your old self, self improvement baby, but cooperation is as equally important, because every part is needed for work, to make your product flourish in the market, if you focus too much in an area will be quite unappealing to the public, so i think yeah, even tho competition got worse in a social standard, in a market standard, is as it always has been.

(And i'm telling this as experience, i've been work in many places, at many things, and this always seems to be the case)
 
Virtual Cafe Awards
Virtual Cafe Awards

Yabba

Ex Fed
Joined
Nov 11, 2022
Messages
346
Reaction score
900
Awards
104
Competition was always doomed to end in the way it used to exist, for the simple reason that shareholder profit is considered (by law, even!) the sole purpose of a publicly traded company. For X company, having a monopoly on something is always going to be better than competing against Y company, and vice versa. So what happens is a kind of unspoken agreement between these corporations: X company will not attempt to compete with Y company in area A, and Y company won't try to compete with X company in area B. The was done most fervently with telecommunications companies for a long time, but an easier to understand example would be Microsoft allowing Xbox exclusives like Cuphead to be sold on the Nintendo eshop, because the way Microsoft sees it, they don't compete with Nintendo. This sort of thing is being done to a more and more extreme extent across just about all financial field - large companies simply agree not to compete, allowing for soft monopolies to form within specific sub-sectors of a market. Any smaller companies or start up that attempt to disturb this balance are ruthlessly crushed, which is much easier now that smaller companies can't leverage competition between large companies to create a niche for themselves.

TL;DR Finance is gradually reaching a point where major corporations simply won't tolerate competition anymore. It's much easier just to create multiple soft monopolies within specific market niches and agree not to interfere with the soft monopolies of your supposed competitors as long as they don't interfere with yours.
Completely agree with this, especially since the market seems to be moving towards a more profitability focused mindset.
 
Virtual Cafe Awards

Similar threads