Quote:
Originally Posted by mrfrisky
Well.. its not ALWAYS the best thing. You can have 5 processors, 3 of them being there for a long time and probably not going anywhere anytime soon because the are established. And you can have 2 new ones trying to get some fast money, bad management, and running away with YOUR money.
Competition is only good when the market and companies are 100% equal. Which they arent in this case. So in this example, competition isnt necessarily better. Thats not what the economists meant with that phrase. No offense, just my point of view.
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Hate to burst your bubble but competition is ALWAYS the best thing to develop market efficiency and the allocation of resources. "Yes and no" as a response to the comment that 'the more competition the better' is NOT correct. They do NOT coexist.
Adam Smith wrote about it in The Wealth of Nations, which is still used today. This notion of competition not always being a good thing is ridiculous. In the absence of competition you wind up with monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies who often engage in anti-competitive practices such as the forming of cartels, restrictive trading agreements, predatory pricing and abuse of a dominant position.
Really sir, this is Econ 101.
With all due respect to both you and Rand, who is a great guy, I must point out that this is not a winnable debate from the position of competition is not good.
That said, anyone who thinks Epoch doesn't deliver a stellar service is an idiot. They have the track record to prove it. However, anyone who thinks having only two companies providing such a valuable service is a good idea is equally misguided. Things happen in a market economy that can't be forecast or foreseen. Things much bigger than a billing company have disappeared overnight: Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, the Berlin Wall, the Roman Empire...
More companies provide the competition that will innovate and bring the goods and services to the market cheaper and more efficiently. The ones that don't keep up or try to take short cuts will falter and will help drive the learning curve to provide better and more plentiful goods and services. Some people will always get hurt to some degree, that is the nature of competition and you can't fix that, only mitigate it by making sure you don't put all your eggs in one (or two) baskets. Not putting all your eggs in one basket is something most of us learned by the time we were 10.