> evolve to a monopoly and strongarm everybody to do exactly what you want whilst removing all pressure on the quality of your product
This certainly isn't true of small businesses and the local mom-and-pop shops in your area.
For free markets to work, small businesses need the ability to thrive and starting one should be exceptionally easy.
What has unfortunately happened in a lot of developed countries, is that in order to regulate the very large companies you're upset about, governments have made it nearly impossible to start small businesses to act as competition. That makes it even easier for companies to consolidate and evolve into a monopoly, strong-arming everyone - the exact opposite effect of what those regulations were hoping to fix.
Are there small businesses in your area like the 1 or 5 person HVAC or cleaning or landscaping or breakfast company that you disdain as much as you disdain UnitedHealthCare?
Always the same nonsense. Simple question: do you think in a fully free market, without any governement intervention, those mom and pop shops would not be bought up or merge?
The truth is that consolidation is an attractor. If it hasn't happened yet in a market, it will. Economies of scale give an undisputed advantage. If there is anything I'm upset about, it is about deluding people by vilifying the only thing that prevents feudalism (and massive abuse of humanity for profit) from happening.
You and I are debating: do free markets naturally inevitably trend toward permanent monopolies, or does free-market competition constantly disrupt incumbents?
The reason why Silicon Valley is the hotbed of such innovations, large booming businesses is regulators haven't yet got their hands into software.
In comparison, more regulated industries like BioTech, Education, Finance, Oil, Gas, Infrastructure is a joke.
The Biden administration had started the ball rolling on shackling up AI and LLMs: regulating, enforcing, mandating bottlenecks. It would have been kneecapping ourselves - essentially placing on ourselves the very sanctions we now place on China! The U.S. wouldn't need China to invade Taiwan to bring down our economy, we would willingly do it to ourselves! The push to regulate AI through mandatory reporting thresholds and compliance bottlenecks for large compute runs is the exact type of barrier-to-entry that kneecaps open-source disruption and entrenches the current giants. Hopefully these illinformed suicidal tendencies are on pause, for now.
I CANNOT for the life of me, understand why we would think, placing any limit on our creativity and productivity is a smart decision but I digress.
> do you think in a fully free market, without any governement intervention, those mom and pop shops would not be bought up or merge?
Is there a regulation right now that stops BigHVAC from acquiring your local, community 1 to 5 person HVAC company?
We don't have to engage in hypotheticals. I already asked you "Are there small businesses in your area like the 1 or 5 person HVAC or cleaning or landscaping or breakfast company that you disdain as much as you disdain UnitedHealthCare?" and I don't have a response yet.
> The truth is that consolidation is an attractor. If it hasn't happened yet in a market, it will. Economies of scale give an undisputed advantage
Mathematically, probabilistically, a software engineer will make way more risk adjusted money working as an employee at the MAG7 than starting their own startup, yet, every month, we have software engineers joining and creating startups.
A similar mindset makes your HVAC tech start their own or continue to run their own even though mathematically, probabilistically, economies of scale would give them an undisputed advantage - but that, consolidation isn't free. An even remotely skilled operator understands that and what that entails.
The moment a big, consolidated HVAC company raises prices or provides terrible service, a smart technician can buy a van, print some flyers, and steal their customers. Free markets allow the mom-and-pop shop to constantly respawn. Infact, Gavin Newsom has managed to distort the HVAC market in California by making it really onerous to operate refrigerants that does make it pretty hard for mom-and-pop shop to constantly respawn. This is why you will notice a lot of PE picking off HVAC companies in California!
By your logic, the world would have stopped at Sears, Blockbuster, and IBM. Yet, the first two aren't even a thing in 2026 and I don't want to comment on the IBM of 2026.
There are even more examples than these that obliterates the tired "consolidation is an inevitable endpoint" argument. A reasonable person would immediately acknowledge that size does not guarantee survival in a market where innovation is permitted and the entry fee is low.
The "feudalism" that you apparently abhor is actually caused by government intervention. When governments heavily regulate industries (like education, healthcare, finance, infrastructure), they make compliance so expensive that only massive, consolidated corporations can afford the lawyers and lobbyists to survive. Regulation protects the consolidated giants from the mom-and-pop startups!
I must deal with reality though - your sentences suggest companies always consolidate and the only way is to counter that with regulation. You really believe in this and this does hold true in heavily regulated industries but then you need to ask why does the same not hold true for industries with low barriers to entry and permissionless innovation?
Here's a thought experiment: Before the AI boom, the MAG7 rivaled the GDP of entire nations and dominated global market caps. They certainly don't need AI and LLMs to stay happy - infact Google, who invented transformers, is now rivaled by OpenAI and a swarm of startups founded by the very engineers who left Big Tech to disrupt it. This isn't the only time this has happened in tech!
So why are they now rushing to outcompete each other, over multi billions of dollars, to the extent they are self-sacrificing staff to freeup capital to invest into compute?
Your reply leans on the observation that there are still small shops in the HVAC market specifically and that there are still markets without full consolidation.
Yes, there is a difference in markets and yes, the height of the barrier of entry makes a big difference in how fast consolidation happens. Yes, regulation can heighten the barrier of entry (but also lower, although less common).
You see instances, moments in time, and conclude that the systems don't evolve in a certain direction. I say that 'Big HVAC' will in the future outcompete all the small shops; that it hasn't happened yet says nothing. You said "a smart technician can buy a van, print some flyers, and steal their customers", but this is only true if they can do so more cost-effectively. Your example leans on the consolidated company doing their job terribly, rather than more efficiently than the small shops. It is true that a low barrier of entry reduces the leeway such a consolidated company has in treating their customers badly, but it is not a guarantee. People regularly do choose the big boys over smaller outfits for a variety of reasons (liability, chance of warranty, etc.).
> By your logic, the world would have stopped at Sears, Blockbuster, and IBM. Yet, the first two aren't even a thing in 2026 and I don't want to comment on the IBM of 2026.
You're naming companies in industries that have become even more consolidated than when those companies were the behemoths. Don't you see that "some big player existing" isn't a stable end state? I never said that being big guarantees survival. Big fish can be eaten by even bigger fish. Yes, there can be disruptors, but they very quickly gobble up the entirety of the previous players to become an even bigger player. It's about market share distribution as a whole. Companies simply have a constant incentive to cooperate, merge, and consolidate to extract higher profits from customers. That never goes away by itself. That is not immoral, but it is amoral. They are behaving rationally and in their self-interest.
Think about what price-fixing, cartels and generally 'market-distortion' is. It is nothing more than cooperation for mutual benefit between companies, which is why it keeps happening over and over and over and over again. It sucks for the customers and society, but for the companies it is fully rational.
You need to seriously think about what happens if all government regulation goes away. Don't handwave it. Really think about it. And I don't mean "they'll dump toxic waste on manatees to raise profits" (they will, but that is not the point). I specifically mean anti-trust regulation and regulation that impacts the barriers of entry to markets. Think about the evolution of players in the markets and what they would do to become fitter (increase profits). Do you really, really don't see consolidation happening? You talk about Silicon Valley as being untouched, but we've had years of the main startup strategy being to work towards being bought by one of the deep-pocketed tech giants. Consolidation was the explicit goal.
I guess the best way out of this would be to have a data driven visualization of the distribution of market share among producers and its evolution through time, to see to what extent such consolidation actually happens. Somebody should vibecode that. Maybe using a frontier AI model made by a local mom and pop shop (zero barrier of entry from government regulation there! :-P).
First, let's agree we will never invoke Godwin's Law. I think we need to establish atleast some common ground at this point. Here are my proposals:
- At the end of the day, a business is an activity that allows a person(s) helping another person(s). Even in a strictly amoral environment, voluntary trade is a positive-sum game where both A and B gain positive utility: A provides a positive utility to B by giving up something A had but B didnt (B has more than before) and B compensates A for it by giving up something B had but A didnt (A has more than before).
- Due to the profit incentive, there will be scammers, grifters and similar people who are not interested in the "helping" part but rather the "profit" part
- A more powerful person can dominate a weaker person
- Societies, of which organizations/companies are part have hierarchies of people
- A person "higher" up the hierarchy has control and influence over a person lower down that hierarchy
- A significant motivating factor for a person starting a business is independence (be at or towards the top of their local hierarchy) and ownership (be at the root of their local hierarchy)
- The person paying the money out of free will has control and influence over the person accepting the money out of free will in exchange for the help
- Regulation is the forced injection of a very large organization asserting themselves into the premier position of the hierarchy (For example: If regulation bans a specific chemical solvent, the supply chain must either shut down, find an alternative, or go "to the black market"/"go underground" where the regulatory authority cannot inject themselves)
- Regulation is hard to change and it's entirely a legal construct
- Regulation is rarely deprecated (For example: there are regulations in place that were written for an era where people would start their cars by hand although its been decades since anyone has actually done that)
- Normal people don't understand legal constructs any better than they can understand multivariate calculus or multithreaded, concurrent code
- Competition is great for customers. Anything that increase competition should be encouraged.
- We must treat customers as adults who are not challenged nor disabled. To keep our discussion manageable, we will ignore those scenarios where customers are not adults or otherwise challenged and disabled
- There are economies in scale but barring regulation or hostile takeovers, scale can only be achieved by willing, cooperating parties (For example: Say there are 3 phone companies in the US: A, T and V. If either one of them wanted to have majority stake in the "one" merged company, short of the other two conceding willingly, that "one" merged company will never exist)
- Inefficiencies can hide better at larger companies
- Larger companies are risk averse although surprisingly they are in the best position to absorb risks - aka Innovator's Dilemma (For example: Google invented transformers but management decided against it because they were afraid of hallucinations affecting search result quality. 3 engineers at OpenAI read the transformer paper and the rest is history. Google is still playing catch up!)
- A significant motivating factor for a person starting a business is independence and ownership that allows them permissionless innovation
- Innovation is an overall gain for humanity which is why society rewards innovation and penalizes rent seeking.
- People can use knowledge to do both evil and good
- Humanity optimizes for the good of people over time
If you disagree with any of the above, let me know which, ideally with supporting arguments.
Now back to our discussion:
> I say that 'Big HVAC' will in the future outcompete all the small shops; that it hasn't happened yet says nothing
It seems like you prefer rejecting evidence that doesn't support your hypothesis. My recommendation is you do the exact opposite. I'm engaging with you precisely because your take is absolutely counter to mine and I a know for a fact, because I have done this before, that my understanding will be much improved at the end of our conversation. It will provide me even more clarity than I have.
> Yes, regulation can heighten the barrier of entry (but also lower, although less common)
and why do you think it's less common for regulation to reduce the barrier of entry?
> You're naming companies in industries that have become even more consolidated than when those companies were the behemoths
So your argument is:
- Sears: Retail is now even more consolidated
- Blockbuster: Entertainment is now even more consolidated
- IBM: Software or Hardware is now even more consolidated
> They are behaving rationally and in their self-interest
You're conflating the rationality and self-interest of an entrepreneur with that of an employee.
Moral and company alignment aside, a researcher in LLMs might not care much whether they go work for Google or OpenAI or Anthropic. They might not even care whether they go work for Alibaba or Bytedance. OTOH, sama is definitely not going to work for Google or Anthropic and it's absolutely in his rational self-interest to behave that way.
There are even more inconsistencies in your writeup but I think this is a good checkpoint for me to allow you to reflect.
I also suggest we continue this over email (details in profile). Thank You for continuing to engage, I appreciate your POV.
This certainly isn't true of small businesses and the local mom-and-pop shops in your area.
For free markets to work, small businesses need the ability to thrive and starting one should be exceptionally easy.
What has unfortunately happened in a lot of developed countries, is that in order to regulate the very large companies you're upset about, governments have made it nearly impossible to start small businesses to act as competition. That makes it even easier for companies to consolidate and evolve into a monopoly, strong-arming everyone - the exact opposite effect of what those regulations were hoping to fix.
Are there small businesses in your area like the 1 or 5 person HVAC or cleaning or landscaping or breakfast company that you disdain as much as you disdain UnitedHealthCare?