by rendall | 2026-01-28 11:54:46+00:00
I feel it's a good essay that says something important but gets it wrong in explanation.

It gets it right when it points out that companies stop acting like normal competitors when they become dominant. Instead of building better products, they work to shape the rules around them, lobby regulators, buy potential rivals, and design markets in ways that protect their position. This pattern is real and widespread and true in all industries, not just tech. Which is a clue to where it goes wrong.

In my opinion, the essay falls short in its explanation. It suggests that executives are caught in confused or contradictory beliefs about markets and competition in tech.

Executives at dominant companies are not confused and not even particularly immoral. At large scale, staying dominant and allowing real competition are not compatible goals. Public companies are punished by shareholders and competitors for slowing, so executive pay is tied to stock price and growth. Losing market dominance can end careers even if the company itself would survive. They are doing what the system rewards them for doing. Regulation is something to manage, delay, or reshape. When enforcement is weak, bending the rules is the rational move.

This behavior does not need a moral or psychological explanation. It follows directly from incentives, scale, and weak oversight.

Any response that treats executives as irrational, uniquely immoral, or trapped in bad beliefs misses the point. Likewise, claims that the system is so corrupt that only sweeping moral awakening or radical activism can fix it do little to address regulatory capture or durable market dominance. These frames obscure how the system actually works.

The only real counterweight to this dynamic, that is, to gain strong regulation, is members of the public showing interest, knowledge and effective solutions. But that pushback depends on public understanding. Right now, the public story is muddled. The focus drifts toward executive morality, tech ideology, or abstract debates about capitalism, instead of the basic structural reality: dominant firms will defend their position as long as the system rewards them for doing so.

When holding government representatives accountable, confused narratives lead to confused demands. Policymakers are pressed to punish individuals, signal virtue, or "rein in capitalism," rather than to change enforcement, close loopholes, or limit the power that comes with scale.

As it is now, government representatives balancing the demands of competing factions have on one hand sustained lobbying with clear material goals from powerful companies, and on the other hand, people talking about eating the rich and seizing the means of production.

A more coherent public narrative would in my opinion extends from:

* Executives respond to incentives; they do not define them

* Market dominance changes firm behavior in predictable ways

* Competition does not survive at scale without active enforcement

* Rule-shaping by incumbents is rational under weak oversight

* Governance failure, not executive psychology, is the core issue

Clearer public narratives will not fix the problem on their own. They will not change incentives or replace enforcement. But they are a minimum first step. Without a shared understanding that this behavior is structural and predictable, not the result of confusion or bad character, meaningful pressure for reform never even gets started.

The essay identifies something real. It just explains it in the wrong terms. The issue is not confused beliefs. It is rational behavior inside a system that no longer enforces competition.