Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative war against start-ups
Over the last year, I've really changed how I think about "tech giants," their competition with other parts of the economy, and what it all means. The realization we'll see 3-5 trillion-dollar tech giants very soon triggered it.<p>Let's take Thiel's startup = monopoly statement seriously for a minute. He didn't mean monopoly in the traditional/legalistic sense. He meant dominating some niche, so that ordinary "margins trend towards 0" rule doesn't apply. 0-marginal costs helps. Network effects too. MSFT are a platform, distanced from market forces by network effects and lock-in.  Google & Amazon are middle-men, aggregators <i>and</i> platforms distanced from market forces by network effects. FB is all network effects.<p>The reason Uber could raise so much money was because they seemed to have a good chance of "dominating" a market, and playing the middle-man between taxis and passengers everywhere, forever. A 1% chance at a one trillion dollar market cap.. that's worth ten billion.<p>For a <i>chance</i> at a piece of a thiel-monopoly on cars, investors will happily bankroll big loses. Big enough to sink competition. When you are playing for a trillion-dollar monopoly, losses don't matter.<p>I dunno what to think of competition like this, at scale. This is a different flavour of capitalism.<p>In any case, neither side wants normal, textbook laissez faire markets. One side is playing for monopoly. The other side is playing for structural stasis via legislation/regulation.