You still seem to be missing the key point: if you want to claim that industries tend toward concentration in general, citing particular concentrated industries isn't going to cut it.
Well... I gave you some examples in trillion-dollar industries and asked for counter-examples.
Many of your counter-examples -- car dealerships, spas, hair salons, etc -- are niche markets.
Few of them were multi-billion industries, and they provide more examples of consolidation.
Just google for "consolidation in restaurant industry" and you will find articles like "6 reas...
Electronics isn't.
Isn't it? Think of a subcategory.
I could go on and on.
Retail has a long tail.
Retail is a prime example of consolidation -- think of Walmart,
Sales by the 20 largest food retailers totaled $515.3 billion in 2016, accounting for 66.6 percent of U.S. grocery store sales, up from 42.2 percent in 1996. Amazon acquired Whole Foods in the summer of 2017. (Source)
Fast forward to 2020, "Amaz...
Of course there have been particular cases where an industry consolidated during a particular period.
That period being... any moment in time.
You made a much stronger claim: that industries in general tend toward consolidation. Pointing to two or three examples where industries consolidated does not provide much evidence for such a claim.
I didn't point to "two or three examples", but eleven business sectors dominated by huge conglomerates.
...On the other hand, pointing to examples where industries did not consolidate provides significan
Restaurants, car dealerships, spas and hair salons, construction, plumbers and electricians, doctors and lawyers.
What you are saying is that services can be provided by small companies.
Fair enough.
But we still can see consolidation there.
Starbucks uses a tactic known as ‘clustering’. They’ll build several cafes right in the same area to obliterate competition. This costs a lot of money, but they can afford it... They even use a strategy called ‘predatory real estate’. They pay more than market rate rents to keep competitors out of a location.
&n...
There are many industries where companies do not tend to consolidate
Can you give me a few examples? I'll list a few important industries:
In each one of these, you'll find a bunch of big players.
For example:
Even if you consider new entrants (such as Tesla) we are still talking...
By ‘lockdown’ we refer to the thing that the US, UK and China have been doing, and what Sweden didn’t.
You should also mention that the approach in the US is not uniform.
Although many states had blanket lockdowns, some were a patchwork of rules, with cities and counties mandating their own restrictions.
Also, a hard lockdown demonstrated to be very useful to flatten the curve in New York.
The average number of life expectancy years lost for a death by COVID is estimated to be ~10 years so 50k COVID deaths ~= 500k QALYs lost.
Where did this number come from?
The life expectancy of a 65 years old man is 19 years.
Source: Life Expectancy Calculator
Now, you must consider that Peru managed to reduce their death rate to ~0.1% with a lockdown. The situation is terrible but it could have been worse -- if they didn't act.
So: your analysis is minimizing the cost of a death and failing to take into account the reduction in the number of deaths thanks to the lockdown.
What we see in reality is that companies tend to consolidate into bigger and bigger conglomerates.
It's easy to see why.
As small companies compete, you naturally get market leaders. As these companies get larger they become more efficient at producing goods and services. They invest in mass production techniques in order to produce goods more cheaply than their competitors. They buy raw materials at cheaper prices because they buy in bulk. They expand specialization amongst their workforce. The bigger they get, the easier it is to make money.
When two market...
Let's say we have N players. The first consequence would be the existence of a unique price.
That's not true if one of the players has a monopoly.
A monopoly will extract as much as it can, delivering as little as possible.
It will be able to charge different prices from different customers. In a free and unregulated market, the monopoly can award you ("prime" customer!) or punish you -- it is the lawmaker, juror and executioner.
...At this point, everyone will specialize in one good (banana or coconut) based on whether each one values banana/coconut
Destroying your production capacity is a strategic mistake, and exposes you to blackmail in the future. A smart owner (or a smart centralized government) would not let that happen. If you want to give me free bananas, okay, I will take them; but I will still keep my banana plantation ready.
The article clearly suggests that the inefficient farmer should stop working on coconuts and work full-time (8.5 hours a day) on bananas; so he wouldn't have time to keep the secondary plantation ready.
That's the recipe to become dependent from a stronger par...
Last week we learned there is plausibly a simple, cheap and easy way out of this entire mess. All we have to do is take our Vitamin D.
Please read this article: There's Only Weak Evidence For Vitamin-D As a COVID-19 Preventative, But Scientists Are Trying to Learn More
tldr;
Taking vitamin D supplements can help, if you are deficient, but it is not a cure.
There is no "simple, cheap and easy way out of this entire mess".
Excerpt:
To protect himself from COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci has long said he’s skipping hugs and handshakes, wearing a mask, and staying...
The author discusses impossibly perverse behaviors such as blowing up one's island, but forgets to mention the most common anti-competitive practices such as dumping and product tying.
For example, the other guy would price coconuts and bananas well below the Zone of Possible Agreement (dumping), and you would be so glad to buy everything from them -- destroying your industry and increasing his comparative advantage.
Of course, he is not altruist, so, when you are completely dependent, he will raise his prices above the ZOPA -- and you have no option because...
What does that mean?