Competitive markets are by far more the exception than the rule. It's just not how capitalism works (because pretty much any competitive market is ripe for “consolidation”, which increases aggregate shareholders value by reducing competitive pressure).
If you want competitive market in a capitalist economy, then you need very active state enforcement.
The markets are absolutely competitive. Google has to pour money into youtube to keep it actively developed and popular. Yet they still lose live streamers to Twitch, video uploads to all kinds of niche specific platforms, and their paid content isn’t coming close to things like Netflix, max, prime, etc.
They are now hemorrhaging search to OpenAI that popped into public existence just recently.
To claim there isn’t competition in these markets is completely ignorant. “A big player eats 80%” isn’t anything like a monopoly/duopoly scenario where there literally isn’t any competition or product advancement for decades.
If you wanna see lack of competition, look at government granted monopolies on utilities. Guaranteed but capped rates means you reduce investment right to $0 and cut costs as much as possible since there is no other way to make money. That “state enforcement” you are calling for is how you end up with PG&E and scenarios like all insurances companies pulling out of the state.
> Google has to pour money into youtube to keep it actively developed and popular. Yet they still lose live streamers to Twitch, video uploads to all kinds of niche specific platforms, and their paid content isn’t coming close to things like Netflix, max, prime, etc.
Phew, here I was stressing out about lack of competition, but you helped me relax.
Google has to invest into Youtube lest it loses out to Twitch (Amazon), Netflix ($35bn per year), HBO Max (Warner Bros, $50bn per year), (Amazon) Prime, Plus (Disney, $90bn per year).
My faith in humanity is restored now that there are alternatives.
That's not competition, that's an oligopoly and they are mostly focus on their own niche for which there isn't more than a minority competitor (there's no competitor to Youtube on for non-live video, Twitch is in a monopolistic competition situation for game streaming, so is netflix on TV series, and Disney and HBO each have a monopoly on their IP).
Claiming that this is a competitive market is a joke.
> To claim there isn’t competition in these markets is completely ignorant. “A big player eats 80%” isn’t anything like a monopoly/duopoly scenario where there literally isn’t any competition or product advancement for decades.
Please tell me how many “product advancement” in Google search or YouTube over the past decade… From a consumer's perspective all that happened was enshitification and despite being owned by a search engine company, YouTube never managed to ship a functional search on their platform.
> If you wanna see lack of competition, look at government granted monopolies on utilities.
Utilities are “natural monopolies” though, and as such they should be state owned. Making a natural monopoly owned for profit is a recipe for rent seeking, and that's why it was promoted …
> That “state enforcement” you are calling for
No, the state enforcement I'm calling for is proper enforcement of antitrust laws, forbidding consolidation through M&A and disbanding companies megacorps. That is to say, what existed in US's golden age.
>Competitive markets are by far more the exception than the rule it's just not how capitalism works
Empirically this absolutely isn't the case; the majority of listed companies have fairly low margins, especially non-tech companies, which can be trivially seen from their financial statements. A low profit margin means a competitive market (because if it wasn't a competitive market the firm could raise its prices to obtain higher margins).
> A low profit margin means a competitive market (because if it wasn't a competitive market the firm could raise its prices to obtain higher margins).
Not necessarily: if prices are elastic then even a monopoly can aim for low profit margin (in percentage) in order to increase profit. What matters is how much total profit are being made, margin only matters when measuring risk.
Also, corporations are social structures, and low competition also encourage complacency in the corporate structure itself, which drives costs up and reduces profit margin.
If you want competitive market in a capitalist economy, then you need very active state enforcement.