Too Many Companies Drain Value from the Economy
> <i>In a healthy economy, competition should get rid of rents, because new companies will enter the market and vie for a slice of that pie, offering lower prices and higher wages until the rents mostly disappear. In some industries, like semiconductors, this still happens.</i><p>Not proprietary semiconductors from a single vendor, only maybe decades-old commodity parts that are drop-in substitutable, either due to numerous implementations of the same signaling, or outright licensing of the original IP to many vendors.<p>The entry barrier to competing with a silicon vendor that has a complex, well established proprietary product stack is extremely difficult.<p>(Which is not to say it constitutes economic rent.)<p>Silicon vendors don't want to offer lower prices; they want to produce something differentiated from the rest, and then charge as much as they can get away with.<p>(BTW, good luck offering lower prices and higher wages at the same time. That is only possible if it can be made up for in volume.)