july

Tell me why this statement is incorrect:

If you want free, open market competition then over a long enough time horizon you have to accept eventual capture by a centralized entity/person. 

By nature, competition leads to a winner.

A winner, means some level of centralization. 

What can change is the type and degree of decentralized checks on the constant pursuit of centralized power.

Building something new. 🟪 Host: /venturecapital /adventures /theitinerant

I see those market winners as local optima — it works for a while until a new global optimum is established elsewhere, which itself becomes a local optimum later.

The average tenure within the S&P 500 index (as a proxy for market winners in their respective industries) declined from 61 years in 1958 to 18 years today.

The index’s sectoral composition has also changed drastically — industrials exited and digital brands entered en masse in the last 30 years. Virtually nobody buys Kodak’s film anymore just like virtually nobody will buy some of the top firms’ current products and services anymore in 30 years.

New disruptive technology obsoleting entire markets and spawning new ones, mismanagement, and external events (global financial crisis, COVID-19, regulatory breakups, etc) are mixing things up at the top faster than before