Nice topic - not talked about enough.
Comments by you like: 'Obsolete? Yes. By design? No' show a problem with how you dichotomize the issue. Try beginning with planned obsolescence as a monetize-able factor shaping design choices, and continuing it with something more like 'To what degree is it present in product/market X?' You will discover that as the complexity of the competitors in a market rise, the finer the granularity of features can be monetized. Naturally, that includes planned obsolescence as well many other aspects - provided they actually translate into real monetization.
Take any market/product, add competition, and the complexity of the successful competitors will rise as an intrinsic property of that system. This is due, in large part from the simple fact that a more complex competitor can have all the acquired advantages of a less sophisticated adversary PLUS additional methods. A little recognized consequence to this is something I call 'Inverse Occam's Razor'. In domains subject to competition, when the complexity of competitors is low, Occam's Razor roughly holds as a good description of action causes. As the complexity of competition rises toward infinity, Occam's Razor completely inverts and the most accurate description of the reasons for actions will drawn from the pool of descriptions with the most complexity.
An unpopular corollary of this applies to markets in general. Contrary to 'free markets' being the stable point of economic competition, it is a transitory phase of an immature market. The stable point is a single dominant competitor, which once it arises has an accelerating advantage over other competitors -i.e. a monopoly. Collisions are just a group that functions as a monopoly, but appears as competitors. It is clear to me that embedded interests in the market system benefit from preventing this view from becoming the common understanding.
Keep these points in mind when you hear an idea that rests its conclusion on capitalism alone. I continue to study the very difficult problem of 'abstract corruption' looking for means to counter negative systemic properties like these - but with limited successes. So far most successes come from developing the language required to think about the problem in new ways.
Monopolies are not something that arises out of market competition, though. The bigger the bureaucracy, the more it wastes and the slower it can adapt to change. This creates room for innovation and competition. Only with political protections can megacorps succeed. What we have now is a consequence of political plunder, not free markets.
Complexity IS difficult to do efficiently, that is true. I was simplifying. It is scaled by efficiency. Just because a competitor manages equivalent complexity with more efficiency doesn't mean the system is prevented from converging into a typical competitor dominance model. It just means the system is still transitioning. The complexity of the system increases because of it and the bar of entry for new competitors ratchets up. Competition decreases in proportion to how many competitors there are - which is strongly correlated to the cost of entry. The competition system (market) matures in an iterative process like this, with the overall effect of a gradual decrease in competition and an overall increase in the value-lead established competitors enjoy over new entries. It has the effect of the dominant position being occupied for a longer and longer time with a lower and lower probability of disruption until they are effectively perpetual monopolies.
If it is a market, information flowing from the consumer becomes increasingly decoupled and the actions of the dominant producer become less responsive. At that point, monopolies usually select a point that extracts maximum value from the system while retaining the minimal responsiveness required to suppress new disruptions as they arise. Generally they park there until they are dislodged by black swan events acting on the system from outside.
Mega corporations don't exist only because of governments. Governments tend to be just another example of this competition process. They will reform about as rapidly as monopolies once the system restarts and for identical reasons. I have been studying 'abstract competition' as a converse of 'abstract corruption' to look for features that may lead to alternatives, but as I said, it is a hard problem.
Again, technological innovation and evolving markets make this true only in immutable markets. Paradigmatic evolutions often - and more often of late - sometimes simplify rather than increase complexity of a niche, and enable upstarts to innovate into a market.
Much like biological evolution, species of products arise from hybrids of extant varieties, and then target specific metrics that make them a better fit to conditions, until a new product arises that simply replaces the former best product. The fossil record reveals this just as well as the history of technology.
Regarding abstract competition and corruption (which is an endemic feature of markets obscured for competitive advantage and of which understanding is far too poorly disseminated) I note that decentralizing means of production are simply obviating the problem - as novel and disruptive technology is wont to do. I expect that the advantage of having control of every aspect of products by consumers competent to produce them themselves is relegating most economic theory to obsolescence, along with collectivism and centralization in every form. This is not to say that cooperation is obsolete, merely forced compliance with institutional authority.
I think you are asserting that technological advancement represent a force that continually erodes the bar of entry (tending to increase competition as a result). If that is an accurate paraphrase of your point, I agree. My point about the new competitor raising the complexity of the system is still valid, but the upward pressure it exerts on the bar of entry is significantly countered countered by the downward pressure that technological advancement exerts.
Good point.
I feel like too much ambiguity still remains in the terms 'technological advancement' and 'complexity' at this point and they are placeholders waiting for more precise descriptions.
Your last point is an important aspect and needs to be included in any understanding of this. I suggest using the following thought experiment as a proxy for capturing the effects of 'technological advancement' on a competition system: Imagine the players in the competition system have a capability slider that can be moved from near zero to near infinite. Set to the low side, it would mean players were roughly like amoeba, primarily helpless to create or affect the majority of their environment (external control locus). Set to the high side, it would mean players are god like and their environment is helpless to resist the affects and intentions of the players (internal locus of control). It is clear that such a conceptual slider would have large effects on a competition system/market. Historically, I would say that typical people have their sliders set quite low, and companies have traditionally been many multiples higher. Looking at how competition occurs with the capability sliders set to different experimental settings seems important for gaining information about competition in general. It is almost time for me to write a program modeling this to take measurements. I haven't figured out the details of modeling the group dynamics represented by super-organisms however. I call them ubermensch and they are capable of cohesively pursuing goals as an atomic player does, but they consist of a group of players. It is hard to model ubermensch correctly in a simple fashion.
The concept of scarcity, scale and freedom take on highly specific meaning and can produce counter-intuitive implications for some capability slider settings in this thought experiment - an additional perspective to consider the problem-space from.
You are rightly parsing my thoughts on technological advance. I also agree that such punctuations are occasional, and that between such events complexity increases, as you state.
Considering the bulk of your remark, I will need time to parse it. However, decentralization of means of production will continue to erode centralization of wealth, and power derived from it. It doesn't seem likely that force can be prevented as long as people tinker. I reckon of post market economy will eventuate, and non monetary aspects of society will become far more valuable as a result. Not sure how that impacts your concept of ubermensch and competition.
Something about how you put that reminded me of an observation I had related to the capability slider thought experiment. It goes like this:
-Begin with a population of super-AIs (slider set high)
-Value shifts entirely to the scarcity of resources used for production
-Now begin each AI player with an identical set of resources
?does any trade occur?
At first I thought no, but after looking at it more closely, I think some players would choose scarcity in some areas to have fulfillment in others in accordance with something equivalent to their version of 'Maslow's pyramid of drives'. There are a couple of solutions, one involving 'time sharing' with each player solving scarcity intermittently, and another involving seeking different equivalencies in the 'drive pyramid' and the players trading accordingly. In any event, it reveals the importance of a 'drive model' for evaluating competitions. Maslow's thingy is just a low rez proxy for a method of detecting and mapping goal structures in general.
Lol, when I removed all scarcity of production resources, I found I expected no trade to occur at all. For some reason, I am suspicious of that, as if I expect the AI to create artificial scarcity intentionally due to qualities from some possible goal structures. .
Markets will persist for the foreseeable future, and resource scarcity continue to necessitate trade. Resource scarcity will eventually become incompetent to affect production - but eventually is a broad term. We're not gonna see personally owned automated asteroid mining for some time, and such mechanisms are the only obvious means to eliminate resource bottlenecks.
I think it was Neal Stephenson that described a communal resource sharing mechanism in 'The Diamond Age' that might accelerate the end of resource scarcity to a large degree, but even that wouldn't preclude rockhopping robots hunting down rare Earth metals and the like.
I reckon you're quite right that in the meantime, resource scarcity will drive specialization and interindustrial trade, as that potentiates greater profit and market share, even desirable state of monopoly.
Interesting comment.
While I understand that Occam's Razor implies simplicity as the best explanation, in complex systems, such as you describe here, it still completely applies. I suspect you do know and agree, but point out how Occam's Razor applied to complex systems seems to devolve to complex solutions. The essential fact of Occam's Razor, that the simplest explanation applies, remains evident even in complex systems, as the advantageous features of the many aspects of complex systems each apply where they do, and the aggregate result of such advantage is complex. Despite complexity being extant, the most competitive mechanism still tends to be the simplest preferential system, and Occam's Razor is confirmed, generally. In markets that are governed by subjective, rather than naturally occurring and objectively preferable, design, products don't always conform to Occam's Razor.
Thus arises competition. It is not uncommon for a product to rise to dominate a market for reasons unrelated to it's design features, such as marketing. Subjectivity of markets doesn't disprove Occam's Razor, but do indicate that very complex systems involving subective interpretations by people of desirability can make even the simplest solution inexplicably complex.
This is only true in a market with immutable factors. Given technological advance, variable supply of materials, and evolving demand, monopolies aren't actually stable. Only when collusion and corruption of free markets prevail (as inevitably are engendered by government) are monopolies even very common. Since presently government is invariably a feature of markets, and very little acknowledgment of the corruption government exerts is accounted for in economic theory, you are more right than wrong regarding monopoly. I agree these 'embedded interests' prefer to keep this understanding cryptic, as well.
Thanks!
Regarding Occam's razor, I don't find your dichotomy useful. That isn't to say the way you break it down doesn't have value or is wrong. Don't worry, my agreeing with it or not shouldn't affect the utility of your version for you at all. True things aren't affected by popularity in the slightest.
Expand your intended meaning for 'immutable factors'. So far I disagree, but perhaps if you elaborate it I can understand in what sense it is true in the way you are using it.
When the technology does not advance, neither supply nor demand are variable, governmental regulation will not change, etc. Those critical factors being immutable potentiate persistent monopoly. Where these factors can change, disruption can occur, and monopolies broken.
I rather prefer being proven wrong than not. I get to learn stuff.
Thanks!
I was including capacity to react to perturbations as part of the meaning of competition- with better competitors having more capacity to react. To you point: A highly turbulent market seems to require competitors to spend more resources reacting automatically decreasing the amount of value that a monopoly can just extract directly without endangering its own viability/market position. ..So you are right, 'market volatility' seems to be a factor that opposes some characteristics of monopolies.
I try to translate the problem into information theory so I can access those tools. In doing that, I was using a signal model as an analog of market conditions to represent the sum of the forces acting on the market. You can imagine a signal that moves around quasi-randomly, sometimes with large amplitude changes, sometimes with changes happening quickly with high frequency. An impossibly competitive and efficient player would conform to that signal exactly. The difference between the 'true' market signal and the signal that a competitor generates is a measure of how efficient that competitor is in the market and how much value they can extract. I find thinking of it this way is somewhat generative - despite the obvious difficulty of translating an actual market into this abstract form.
I can see how models of markets would be potentiated at this point by such signal substitution for what are presently ineffable non-random effects. Such models would reveal many interesting things about markets, and I suspect would particularly reveal the far more substantial than expected influence of corruption. My guess is that as various influences were quantized, more and more of the cryptic influences would be shown to be such collusive forces.
I am well heartened to hear of your work in this regard.
Thanks!