Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've ever been near a major automaker's test engineering lab, you quickly realize that ~all of them are doing shady things to hit their numbers. This is a result of the cold hard engineering fact that our current level of technology is insufficient to hit the numbers without raising costs significantly. But once one automaker starts to fudge the numbers at a given price point, all the others must do the same thi…
"This is a result of the cold hard engineering fact that our current level of technology is insufficient to hit the numbers without raising costs significantly. But once one automaker starts to fudge the numbers at a given price point, all the others must do the same thing or they fall behind." I'm going to have to remember to bring this up as an example whenever people claim private industry can police/regulate them…
Do people actually claim that? That's insane.
The natural state of all groups with the same interest is collusion. Self-policing only happens if there is a viable threat of even worse external policing. (Example: the Hays' code for films, which was only voluntarily established because of the looming threat of outright legal censorship of the film industry.)
Likewise, competition only emerges when:
* Parties are in a zero sum game where they lose little from cooperation.
* They lack the means to communicate and collude efficiently.
* They are forcibly prevented from colluding (anti-trust laws, etc.).
In the modern world where private communication is cheap and easy and where almost all market interactions are non-zero sum, the only thing preventing giant mega-cartels is the threat of legal action.
And even that's not working well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9