This feels like he's copying Stratechery, down to the stick figure MS Paint diagrams (e.g. https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-line/ )
Ah, that is a distinct style. Do you think they commissioned an artist to perform such an exact copy?
An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
91–100 of 160 posts
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#92Middlemen (e.g. wholesalers and retailers) serve a valuable function. Imagine each consumer having to maintain relationships with hundreds of factory owners and tens of farmers.
The only difference between a manufacturer’s online store and a retailer’s from customer point of view is that the retailer sells multiple brands. I guess maybe there’s some value if you want to browse different brands, but if you already know what you want then the middleman is not providing you any benefit at all over the manufacturer’s online store. Brick and mortar is different because they’re actually maintainin…
"Brick and mortar is different"
Not in the ways you describe:
"because they’re actually maintaining a space to show the items"
This is similar to Amazon's site browse/search experience.
"and bringing them close to you"
This is similar to Amazon's fulfilment network.
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consumers and producers can form cooperatives. They are middlemen, but not overfed ones.
I would struggle to define sub 5% profit margin retailers and wholesalers as overfed.
Poor starving Target investors with their stock being up 180% from 5 years ago
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
The passivity against monopolies has more to do with international competition and the fear of losing world domination.
The passivity against monopolies in US is a well-documented consequence of a drastic reinterpretation of the historical justification for anti-trust legislation in 1980s, driven primarily by right-wing "free market" proponents (I'm putting that in quotes because any monopoly is the opposite of free market by its classic definition). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox Before then, things were very dif…
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Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
here in chicago most of them aren't even farmers. They are just middlemen.
Somehow people expect to buy straight from the farmers at the farmers market located in the downtown of a large city, ignoring the fact that the farmers do need to.. farm their land. Traveling with their goods back and forth within the city isn't really an efficient use of their time.
well if its called 'farmers market' then that's the assumption. Should be called 'random market' otherwise.
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#96The problem is users don’t necessarily want a fractured market. It’s convenient to have one vendor. In the short term, customers value the simplicity of having just one search engine or e-commerce experience. They don’t think about the long term harms to them / the economy.
Specialized vendors usually deliver better products than generalist vendors though because its simply harder to have expertise in all domains than a fewer number.
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#97If we didn't da anything about Microsoft ca 2000, we absolutely can't do anything about what Stoller writes about. Do we even know what Stoller's funding is? Propa... Material like this appeared around 1996 and continued to surface all through the Microsoft trial
It would be quite ironic if Microsoft was funding "Google is a monopoly" research.
But not out of character, or out of the question.
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#98Middlemen (e.g. wholesalers and retailers) serve a valuable function. Imagine each consumer having to maintain relationships with hundreds of factory owners and tens of farmers.
Yeah the point of the article is if you can monopolize that layer you can extract enormous rent, especially if you get yourself exempted from the law against kickbacks which pharmacy middlemen did.
How does Walmart (cited early in the article) fit into this overall narrative?
As a consumer, I feel like Walmart operates in a competitive market. I go to Walmart even less often than I go to Target.
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#99I wonder about the "Google extracts enormous rents" bit. Yes, in the aggregate, Google is earning lots of money from advertisers, but for the average advertiser, how big is this cost, and compared to what? (Genuine question - I don't know a lot about advertising.)
Also, given the anti-advertising mindset on Hacker News, it seems weird to get all that upset about advertisers paying too much? "Who will think of the advertisers," say people who have probably installed ad blockers.
Re: An Economy of Overfed Middlemen
#100I wonder about the "Google extracts enormous rents" bit. Yes, in the aggregate, Google is earning lots of money from advertisers, but for the average advertiser, how big is this cost, and compared to what? (Genuine question - I don't know a lot about advertising.) Also, given the anti-advertising mindset on Hacker News, it seems weird to get all that upset about advertisers paying too much? "Who will think of the adv…
I know a surgeon who invested €10k/month in Google ads for a while just to get a few patients per month. CPC was €10 or so. Absolutely nuts, you’d think. But one procedure nets him €8k, and he said that those ads are absolutely vital to him - without Google ads, his revenue suffered greatly. His campaign was setup wrong for a while and he immediately noticed because people stopped booking surgery with him.