From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Tue Jan 23 2001 - 18:18:01 MST
> "Emlyn" <emlyn@one.net.au> wrote,
> > Harvey wrote:
> > The way to win in the market should be to build a better product,
> >not sabotage a competitor's product.
>
> >"Should" in the market? Hmm...
>
> Yes, "should" in the market! The government should avoid
> price-fixing. Companies should avoid forming monopolies. Companies
> should avoid blowing up other companies. CEOs should avoid
> assassinating other CEOs. The proper way to compete in a true market
> is to build a better product that can compete and win. Any other
> method of avoiding competition is not the "market".
>
> I stand by my statement. The way to win in the market should be to
> build a better product. Sabotaging a competitor's product or company
> is not a "market" process. It is a way of avoiding market
> competition. Building a better product is extropian. Tearing down a
> competitor's product so that you don't have to make your own better
> is anti-extropian.
> --
> Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
>
OK, so you are talking about ideals over pragmatism/reality. Fair enough.
I don't think you'd ever see this, though. Business is not the olympics,
fair play, it's not how you win, it's how you play the game, all that good
stuff. Hell, the olympics is hardly the olympics by those standards. Nothing
is.
Business is a lot more like natural selection. It's not an environment where
fair play is going to help you stay alive. It's dirty, and desperate. Even
those big monopolies, who crush all in their path, are one step, one
environmental shift, one mis-direction, from becoming corporate worm food.
Particularly, pure competition never, ever makes good sense. If you have to
flog a product in an environment of multiple competitors, each striving
solely on his/her merits, and the winner takes all (pretty much par for the
course), what chance is it that the winner will be you? Less than 50%? Say
the money invested is your own. Does that make any sense at all, as a
business model?
Different sized companies cope in different ways. Small companies stay small
and nimble, and they find obscure niches which are not desired or occupiable
by the larger players. Medium sized companies... dunno what they do.
Struggle, I think Eat the littluns, and try to avoid the bigguns. Sometimes
they band together, for strength in numbers (eg: they push Standards). Large
companies stomp around breaking things that look dangerous, roaring at each
other from the hilltops like mighty dinosaurs.
But no one gets into the fighting pit and dukes it out, in a good clean
fight, may the best man win, tally ho, what! What a damned mad idea. Well,
actually some try to, by building a better product and relying on it's
merits. Some of the best ideas have died that way.
Emlyn
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:05:16 MST