91–100 of 363 posts
I was involved in the building of the 911 system for my country. When doing that, we had to design it with this in mind. If the system ever fell down, the operators had standard templated papers they would fill, and once the system would be back up they would add the case data back in.
Related note: car stealerships are a relic of the past. There is no reason why a middleman should exist when buying a car. Consumers should have the option to purchase directly from the manufacturer. I am personally not a fan of Tesla as a vehicle, but I admire the business model of buying directly from Tesla. Stealerships are a drain on the consumer. All that land they own can be used for productive economic activit…
I think you go too far. I too have a deep dislike for dealerships, but they are not useless. Specifically, it's a place you can go to test drive cars and they have OEM-certified garages for warranty repairs. Can't test drive when you buy online. I think the main problem with dealerships is the government granted monopoly. If a dealership is in a region, most states prevent any other dealership from setting up shop in…
Tesla doesn't have independent dealerships and it's quite easy to test drive their cars before you buy.
This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...
I know some (former) CDK alumni and I'm not surprised. Notorious for paying below market in engineering and IT. A place to cut your teeth but not to stay.
Why don't they have any competition?
Best case, this startup gets bought out by a larger competitor. Worst case, they get crushed by it.
Oligopolies going to oligopoly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that's a good comparison. There are several middlemen before you buy a Coke or Pepsi. Usually, your soft drink is manufactured from the brand's syrup by a bottling partner, which is then distributed to a retailer, who you buy it from. e.g: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/company/us/en/a...
I used to work for Pepsi-Co so I am well aware of how their distribution works. But in this case, at the point of retail it makes no difference. The store can sell as many different brands as they want. The problem is not the middlemen, it's the exclusivity arrangements that disincentivize brand competition.
e.g. I drank Coke products in my undergrad because of my school's exclusivity agreement.
One of the reports of this I heard was on Marketplace the other day... and the part that made me chuckle was on cursive. Pen and paper, but please no cursive: Widespread cyberattack sends car dealers back to 20th century - https://www.marketplace.org/2024/06/21/cdk-global-hack-softw... > Car dealers are a pretty big part of this economy, doing some $1.2 trillion in sales last year, according to the National Automobil…
I like how they blame "young people" for not being able read cursive instead of their own terrible hand writing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why don't they have any competition?
they do. there are a couple of large competitors and several small ones. the reason there are not more boils down to: a high barrier to entry, since software suites (not individual products) are often needed, and the high cost of retraining folks using older systems in order to use your new, better product.
Some of the smaller mom-and-pop stores just use small business accounting systems like quickbooks but those get pretty tedious to maintain with any sizable number of sales or employees per month.
Related note: car stealerships are a relic of the past. There is no reason why a middleman should exist when buying a car. Consumers should have the option to purchase directly from the manufacturer. I am personally not a fan of Tesla as a vehicle, but I admire the business model of buying directly from Tesla. Stealerships are a drain on the consumer. All that land they own can be used for productive economic activit…
> All that land they own can be used for productive economic activity or housing. No it can't. You still need places where cars can be repaired as well as storage for parts/cars inventory. The only way you reclaim some land is if service gets worse. Edit: For example, Tesla sells direct to consumers but there's still a Tesla "showroom" in my town. In terms of footprint/appearance it's basically a dealership. So where…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that's a good comparison. There are several middlemen before you buy a Coke or Pepsi. Usually, your soft drink is manufactured from the brand's syrup by a bottling partner, which is then distributed to a retailer, who you buy it from. e.g: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/content/dam/company/us/en/a...
I used to work for Pepsi-Co so I am well aware of how their distribution works. But in this case, at the point of retail it makes no difference. The store can sell as many different brands as they want. The problem is not the middlemen, it's the exclusivity arrangements that disincentivize brand competition.