Too Many Companies Drain Value from the Economy
> 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.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.The entry barrier to competing with a silicon vendor that has a complex, well established proprietary product stack is extremely difficult.(Which is not to say it constitutes economic rent.)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.(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.)