Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Not the healthy ones. Healthy ones have a wide variety of choices, and the competition nipping at your heels keeps user-hating features out of the product. Right now the two smartphone operating systems are being made by two companies who are in court for colluding on hiring. That's the worst possible market, and as you would expect, it produces trash.

One thing I'm looking forward to with my future dumbphones are how disposable they are if they turn out to be horrible.




Would you please name some of these "healthy" markets?


Screwdrivers, silverware, coffeemakers... (can you tell I'm looking around the room?)

Whenever there are no individual participants large enough or enough participants colluding to cause regulatory capture.

The US isn't interested in healthy markets anymore.


Orthodontia, laser eye surgery, boxed chocolates.


"Shopping around" among dentists is virtually impossible. I can have only the most superficial and largely useless opinion of a dentist until I actually allow them in my mouth, at which point the deal is done. This is not a "healthy market" comparable to anything we're talking about here.

Ditto laser eye surgery and pretty much anything else remotely medical in nature.

Chocolate is not a healthy market either: http://ideas.time.com/2013/11/01/why-so-little-candy-variety...


Orthodontists - not dentists. Boxed chocolate - not candy bars.

Orthodontia and laser eye surgery are examples of the types of healthy markets that flourish in the absence of over-regulation.

You also seem to be conflating the health of markets and some idiosyncratic issues of your own regarding discovering competent suppliers.


> Orthodontists - not dentists.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orthodontist

or·tho·don·tics

a branch of dentistry that deals with helping teeth to grow straight

If we're not even going to argue about the same thing, I'm done here.


"That's the worst possible market"

Second worst.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: