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0 pointsEarw0rm1y ago0 comments

There are two possible outcomes:

- The Julii infiltrate and take over,

- A company run by Julii from the outset comes to dominate the market.

This is because "what we actually make" is a specialist skill, whereas business, sales, operations, financial planning and governance, HR, culture, legal are broadly generalist; and the bigger you get, the greater the important all that stuff becomes, relatively, to core execution on the product and its tech.

Which is not to say the importance of the latter ever goes to zero, but as a ratio it's like 1/log N or so.

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epicureanideal1y ago

I would argue it’s because the whole economy is basically an oligopoly and there aren’t really enough opportunities for competition. Once a company reaches a certain level, it focuses on pulling up the ladder rather than climbing the ladder.

Earw0rmOP1y ago

"enough" is a value judgment, it depends what field of endeavour we're talking about (and whether the types of bug that proliferate in large firms are preferable to those that proliferate in small ones).

Uber, for example? Dreadful company, but a lot of the small local outfits they displaced were in some ways worse.

Local news media? This seems a more cut and dried case where small is preferable to large, and yet.. small firms are by no means incorruptible, and if the local vested interest succeeds in doing so, history will record only his point of view.

Cars are an interesting one, it looks like the EV transition is going to allow a whole new generation of (mostly Chinese, it must be said) manufacturers to establish a foothold. That's a pretty rare event for modern consumer products, the barriers to entry are huge and in general the reasons why are good.

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