Sunday Sermon: Making Markets More “Efficient”?

One of the nasty side-effects of a market “maturing” is that the large companies that shape the market will use their installed base as leverage to try to split the market so that they can dominate the split part more thoroughly. It’s a gamble: they hope they can pull customers from the other “side” and lock them in. I’m sure that capitalists have some explanation how this makes a market more efficient, but I suspect they’re talking about making the market more efficient for the vendors, and not better for the customers.

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This Is Not A Modest Proposal

“If you tax the rich, they’ll just leave!” – I’m sure you’ve heard that one, before. It’s often trotted out alongside the old, “If you change the tax system, the rich will just figure out new ways to cheat.” That made me wonder, is it possible to figure out cheat-proof systems?

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