YKK has the unique advantage that everyone working with clothing knows that the only brand to deliver consistently high quality is, you guessed it, YKK. There have been a number of HN submissions on that subject in the past.

the fact that they were fined isn't really relevant to my point. you can use patagonia if you'd like

The point is that it's possible for a company to focus on one thing for a long time. Do you dispute this?

Competition can also result in multiple "winners" - especially when there is a product that could go two ways, so you have two companies that focus on the different ways.

Or when there's no real difference in product so there can't really be a winner (sugar water/Pepsi/Coke).

There don’t need to be “winners” in every market. Consider the market for grain. Whether suppliers tend to centralize depends on market characteristics.

Keeping markets competitive often does require regulation. (For example, common carrier regulations.) Thriving markets don’t happen by accident; they are often tough to get going and don’t necessarily happen without a stable government that allows trade to happen.

We only tolerate capitalism since it brings better results for consumers and society. If a “winner” is allowed to take over and have too much control, this condition fails, and it’s time to do some of: 1. break up monopolies, 2. regulate corporate behavior, and/or 3. nationalize industries. And let the cycle start again.

> That implies winners.

It seems to me that competition does not imply winners. At least not permanent winners. The difference between capitalism and a traditional competition being that a traditional competition has an end point (at which point a winner can be declared), whereas capitalism has no ending point and thus can only have a winner for a time.

Imagine a sporting competition that started with 20 teams in a league and every year the bottom team was eliminated until after 19 years there was only 1 team left. We would not want to leave the competition in that state, we would want to introduce more teams to sustain a level of competition. And if the introduced teams consistently had no chance of winning due to the dominance of the top team, then we'd likely change the rules to level the playing field.