The US loves “free enterprise” and “competition”, but what is the ultimate goal of this game? To eliminate your competition, such as giants like Wal-Mart and Microsoft are well on their way. So, won’t free enterprise consume itself leaving America with one choice per product, like…oh what’s that country? Russia?
Is that America’s future?
…With liberty and one brand for all,
There’s too much diversity of taste to have one choice per product. But I can see fewer brands.
Free Enterprise has always seemed a bit pie-in-the-sky to me. My life has taught me little but that business leaders are perfectly happy to game a system, make tons of money, and leave a HUGE mess - Enron, WorldCom, Housing crunch. It’s a nice theory, looks good on paper, is even principled… but humans aren’t that reasonable. We need laws. Regulations. And someone looking over certain shoulders.
We just don’t like it.
Years ago, K-Mart was the retail giant, tho there was some competition, and Wal-Mart was the upstart. It may take a while, but there are a few retailers poised to creep up like the Death Star upon Wal-Mart. For a while, Kodak was THE photography brand. Now, not so much. When there is a company that looks dominant, even monolithic, there are always others that could arise to give it a run for it’s money & even take it down. That is the essence of free enterprise and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Right now, there is some kid in a garage who will make Bill Gates or heirs his bitch.
Indeed. Microsoft has seen slow and steady pressure from other OS’s such as Apple, and the new kid, Linux. Eventually Microsoft will fall. They always do. It’s the capitalist circle of life.
Both of those giants have hardly eliminated the competition.
Target is eating Wal-Mart’s lunch in public opinion and profits. Not to mention the fact that Best Buy is cutting into their media/electronics sales (Wal-Mart is notorious for crowing that people buy more CDs from Wal-Mart than anywhere) and Amazon and iTunes are taking a big chunk as well.
And while Microsoft is the king of the software game, there are dozens of companies that put out competing products that are gaining in popularity every day. It’s possible to have an industry giant and a bunch of smaller shops all humming along at profibility. And it’s also great for innovation and competition.
Your argument has no weight.
There are exceptions, but I think the truth is that most brands compete for tiny bits of market share. Even a hugely popular brand with tons of customer loyalty like Coca-Cola is constantly worried about Pepsi encroaching on their sales. They may WISH Pepsi would go away, but it’s never going to happen.
There is probably a bigger danger that there will be just a couple huge companies that own all the various brands, but I don’t think the diversity of brands will shrink much. In large companies that own a lot of brands, they often own competeing products, and these brands still compete fiercely for market share.
I think there is a difference between products that are genuinely different (e.g. computer programs) and stuff like Coke / Pepsi, where most people can’t tell the difference* and the largest part of the budget is advertising.
*Obviously Dopers can tell this sort of thing 
Some companies, like GE, may be around for centuries, but that’s partly because they become huge semi-holding companies who aren’t dependant on one industry. Microsoft has done a lot to diversify. Losing its original core market would hurt, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing which could happen either. It’d survive and still be a powerhouse. Both GE and Microsoft recognized early on that diversity meant they could survive a lot. So GE expanded into a vast range of manufacturing and MS expanded into a vast range of software and so forth.
Generally speaking, the less government interferes in a market, the more competition is has. The way that corporations primarily seek to control the market is through influence over government, although the government’s actions can be overt (granted monopolies) or covert (stringent business rules which favor established companies).
Only regulation will allow that to happen. That type of regulation will come in some form of legislated for, heavily lobbied, non-economical entry barrier, and possibly some type of capital raising barrier (like forbidding people to IPO or some other such nonsense).
The idea that free enterprise or capitalism will lead to one company controlling the market is a remnant of Marxist economics. It has no basis in history and I doubt you’ll find a reputable economist who subscribes to this view. As others have pointed out, competition may produce companies that, for a short time, seem to dominate the market. But as long as the government does not restrict competition, these companies usually lose market share and are replaced by other companies.
Jinx, do you actually have any historic evidence to back up your assertion or are you merely relying on a flawed view of both history and economics?
Jinx, you need to go out and visit some actual businesses.
Remember:
Most businesses are very small - fewer than 50 employees - and could not possibly dominate any market.
Most people work for small businesses.
Stuff you read in the paper and on TV about Evil Corporations is simply not the way most businesses run or ever could.
“Free enterprise” means letting people do what they want when it comes to buying and selling things. IF it meant inevitable monopolies, why would we not have monopolies on everything right now?
I don’t accept your premise, but let’s pretend it’s true. We have anti-trust laws to prevent that from happening. That’s why your conclusion is incorrect, even if we accept your premise.
In the largest sense, the ‘goal’ of this ‘game’ is freedom. The freedom to contract your labor to who you want, to spend your earnings how you want, to make your own decisions about what you will buy, what you will attempt to create, and how you will live your own life.
Sometimes this little detail gets lost in the discussion.
Like the quote…
Capitalism is great. The only problem with Capitalism is the Capitalists.
F.W. Woolworth had hundreds and hundreds of stores, put plenty of Mom and Pop retailers out of business, dominated the retail landscape in many ways, and built the tallest building in the world at the time. Then they crumbled, with some of their stores being sold to an upstart called . . . WalMart.
Similar story with Sears.
Technology changes. Tastes evolve. New marketing channels open up.
By the way, the OP also doesn’t really define “choice of products.” If all the stores in the U.S. were WalMart (it’ll never happen, but let’s say), would the OP think the customer had lost all choice of product? If the product is “retail stores,” sure. But I don’t buy retail stores. I buy stuff. And in my experience, walking in to a WalMart, or a Costco, exposes me to several thousand different products, the mix ever changing – dried blueberries, cashmere sweaters, aluminum flashlights, wild caught salmon, discounted bestsellers, gelato. I’m not sure where in my town I would have even bought any of those things twenty years ago. I for sure could not have bought them all in a single place, if they were to be found at all. My choice of products has dramatically increased – to the point where you can say we make consumerism and product browsing and acquiring too easy, but that was not the OP’s gripe.
No one says that free enterprise inevitably leads to monopolies. But it can, as you show. In the long run, of course, things change and the monopolies crumble. But in the long run we are all dead.
Problem is, Walmart has improved themselves to such a point that there’s an odd duality. They are hard to compete with in their niche, and if they are to grow they have to leave the niche - and will likely become less efficient.
That’s a bit off topic, but… somehow germane to the idea of an immortal company.
How did he show that? Not one of the stores he mentioned – including Wal Mart – are even close to being monopolies.
Marx predicted capitalist competition would eventually produce an economy dominated by a monopoly or trust in each sector, but it never seemed to work out that way. Not for the whole economy of any country, anyway. Communist revolutions, when they happened, happened under very different circumstances, and never in a fully industrialized country.
Actually, isn’t that America’s past? Isn’t this sort of thing what the anti-trust laws of about a century ago were supposed to remedy?