Ever-more-restrictive government regulations are what allows these OEMs to ‘leverage’ their market power this way. I am not sure that a new regulation can solve it, as these sorts of mandates don’t seem to have worked in any other market.

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jmward01 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The argument isn't 'more' regulations or 'less' regulations, it is the right regulations. The problem is that big companies slowly allow regulations that don't hurt them but do block competition by aggressively fighting regulations that help the startup (their competition) or help the consumer in ways that make them less money. It isn't hard to be evil and create regulatory capture. You don't actually have to be active in crafting regulation, just be active in blocking the right regulation. General statements that are 'against regulation' play into big companies making things worse.

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cucumber3732842 9 hours ago | parent [-]

These big companies absolutely allow regulations that "hurt" them. Deere doesn't want to deal with farmers who are pissed off that emissions stuff results in a service call at a bad time and can't be overridden, or obnoxious safety stuff that make products less useful outside of their "textbook" application, or something that forces them to expensively certify their product is XYZ or something.

Buuuuut, the cost of implementing that stuff hurts the competition way more, so Deere and friends don't really fight it.

They're trading absolute market size for stronger control over market share. Less people are going to buy their products at the margin if the products are made worse. But those that do will buy it from them, so more profit.

	▲	pocksuppet 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those are load-bearing quotation marks: you're saying the regulation doesn't hurt them, only "hurts" them. If the regulation hurt them, they wouldn't allow it.

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post-it 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're right, the solution is getting rid of swathes of intellectual property legislation, not adding more.

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kube-system 8 hours ago | parent [-]

That's a double edged sword. Investors demand a return regardless of what IP law is. They'll invest in the companies that find some way to protect their investment -- NDAs, stronger technical protections, services-models, etc.

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QuantumFunnel 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Maybe it's time the economy shifts from having to prioritize the investors for everything

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kube-system 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You don't have to prioritize them. You can choose to encourage the rich to hoard their money elsewhere. But there are consequences to every policy decision.

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post-it 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The rich don't have money, they have assets, and those assets can't go anywhere. It doesn't matter if the rich buy or sell a farm in Canada, the farm is still in Canada.

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kube-system 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The rich don't have money, they have assets

Yeah, we're talking about the same thing.... the word for a rich person who exchanges their cash for non-cash assets is "investor"

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cucumber3732842 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It doesn't matter if the rich buy or sell a farm in Canada, the farm is still in Canada.

Have we learned nothing from what happened to the US's industrial economy.

If you turn the farm into an obviously poor investment it'll go tits up because neither wall street nor main street is dumb enough to invest money into a losing proposition.

	▲	cindyllm 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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throwaway173738 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We got rich by not prioritizing the needs of investors in the first place. Maybe we need to start prioritizing the needs of the larger society again.

	▲	kube-system 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You certainly don't need economic investment to become "rich" in culture, enlightenment, or humanity, for sure. And there is value to that. However, financiers played an indisputable role in the current state of economic wealth in today's world.

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estimator7292 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Remember that those regulations are written by the OEMs they benefit and whom bribe legislators to pass those regulations.

Any argument made without acknowledging this is purely in bad faith. The problem is not regulation that benefits OEMs. The problem is that you can simply purchase regulations that benefit you.

	▲	nickff 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are many regulations, written by a variety of actors, often in strange alliances. Safety, environmental, and disclosure regulations are often the culprits behind industry consolidation and oligopolization.