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0 pointschristophilus3y ago0 comments

It's never happened, though. Buffett likes to say something along the lines of, "I like to invest in businesses that could be successfully run by a monkey, because eventually they will be."

My prediction is that every behemoth of today will be tomorrow's Sears Roebuck, GE, West India Trading Company, etc. At some point, they'll become mired in bureaucracy. Enough incompetence will eventually rise to the top to allow competitors to pounce.

I'd bet on that, if I had to.

That said, I may easily be wrong, and I honestly share your concern about Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

In particular, I want a successful OSS phone competitor to Apple and Google. I don't think something as important as our telecommunication devices should be run by a duopoly. There's no freedom in the phone market the way there is in the PC market, and I'd really like to see that change.

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JumpCrisscross3y ago

I agree with the premise. Success is never immortal. The gap, however, is in societies being intended to be immortal. If you let companies run amok, so the thinking goes, when goes the company so goes the country. Limiting companies’ power let’s them creatively destroy one another without threatening the culture at large.

wyre3y ago

I have an easier time seeing the fall of the US before I see the fall of Amazon.

bombcar3y ago

Amazon would have to be eaten by a three-prong (or more) attack, but I could see it fall quite quickly.

AWS is probably the biggest moat they have, but not often what people think of by "Amazon".

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dinvlad3y ago

I think the silver lining is at the time of their peak Sears etc. seemed unstoppable. And it took only a few decades for that to be undone. And that is basically guaranteed to happen to any behemoth simply by their inertia and inability to stay relevant for a long time.

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