From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 01:56:50 MST
Emlyn wrote:
>
> > "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.
>
What works technologically is not a playing field, or even business. It
is a matter of engineering and science ultimately. Inferior solutions
extract a price even if they are popular and making money. We all 'win'
based on how close to the best technology we end up having to live and
work within. The fates of different companies are not the most
important criteria.
> 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.
>
Business, is not a natural given. It is in the context of particular
economic, political and technlogical realities. As those change what
works for the business changes and it becomes more or less connected to
the real welfare of all the people concerned with it directly and
indirectly. It need not be a cut-throat jungle and quite often, even
today, is not.
> 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?
>
The winner seldom takes all in a natural market. If they do they can
only keep that hold by continuing to offer the very best product. Other
tactics will not work for very long. I think you have some strange
ideas about business.
>
> 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.
It is not such a zero-sum game. Some of the best ideas are being given
away and are dominating. Isn't that wild?
- samantha
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