YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Capital Wants a Monopoly

8 points larrysalibra 1 hour ago 6 comments

Frieren 1 hour ago | parent

It is called feudalism. You have lords owning the land and everybody else needs to rent it. That is what capital is afterwards. You will own nothing, fight.

steveBK123 1 hour ago | parent

Right it started with SaaS and content subscriptions. We also have all the gamification, enshittification and up-selling in the physical-world Uber-For-X business models.

They've made all the delivery slower and added an option for you to pay $5 more to make it arrive at the speed it used to. We've jacked up fees and added a monthly subscription that reduces some of those fees back down.

As they take a larger cut from restaurants, many have increased in-app prices so you are paying multiple premiums&fees.

First non-cherry picked example I checked first restaurant in-app: $16 dish is $19.20 in-app , $5 delivery fee (flat-ish per order), $2 marketplace fee (scales with order size) to make it $26.80 pre-tax. +70% increase on direct retail in-restaurant price.

ForHackernews 1 hour ago | parent

Bizarre take:

> The USA needs an equivalent of China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). This regulatory body generally prevents this tech platform monpoly nonsense

I guess the author is completely unfamiliar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

steveBK123 1 hour ago | parent

Maybe author means we should actually enforce our antitrust laws that are on the books, on their merits.

Rather than the multi-decade consensus "if it lowers consumer prices in short term its ok" or 2024+ "if they donate to my ballroom, they get a pass".

pimlottc 1 minute ago | parent

Note that the author specified a regulatory agency, not a law. Laws are great, but they need strong and vigilant agents to enforce them.

gainda 1 hour ago | parent

it was not so long ago that TR busted trusts, but the time is overdue for history to repeat itself.