Тег: Monopoly

What if a monopoly has a larger economic cushion and can operate at a loss for several years?

How do you plan to fight it? How will small companies, even those with large investors, be able to withstand a giant, and will investors even take such risks by investing money in small companies? Yes, I know the arguments that monopolies cannot arise, but what if it happens anyway, and moreover, I understand that ancap is not planned to be built from scratch, but on an existing market where large producers already exist.

Anonymous question

A monopoly is the desired and most comfortable state for any business. Under the conditions of centralized political power, large businesses are economically motivated to engage in lobbying to ensure a privileged position in the market through regulatory capture. Small businesses are economically motivated to create associations and engage in lobbying through them. In a country with a sufficiently diversified economy, this creates a situation where most entrepreneurs, one way or another, feed politicians, regulations become more complex, exceptions to the rules multiply, and business, having spent a lot of effort acquiring the regulator’s favor, in the best case remains where it started. If strategic industries are singled out in a state, then all is lost: this means the guaranteed infringement of other industries.

And so, according to the problem’s conditions, we have managed to gradually move from this depressing situation to a free market, primarily free from political power. Let’s assume this happened quite quickly, and we inherited a skewed market where some enterprises are disproportionately large, even up to monopolies in certain industries. What does this mean? If they are larger than is economically feasible, it means they produce their goods with higher costs than if they were smaller. At the same time, they have serious reserves and prevent the emergence of small competitors by supplying their goods at a loss. This only means that some small (and therefore more economically efficient than the monopoly monster) entrepreneurs will constantly try to enter this market, thereby creating pressure on the monopolist, preventing it from relaxing and raising prices to a comfortable level. Speculators will stockpile its goods by buying them cheaply, and as soon as the monopolist raises the price, the stockpiles will be sold for a profit, forcing the monopolist to lower the price again. This will continue until the monopolist’s shareholders replace the directors with more sensible ones, because they want stock growth and dividends, not all of this.

The small players, who all this time were simply doing something else where there was no monopoly, will then breathe a sigh of relief and flood the newly opened market. And the consumer, all the time while the goods were sold at a loss, was happy and had no reason to be outraged by the monopolist’s behavior. So why fight a dumping monopolist? He is doing great; this is what socially responsible business looks like under ancap.

Can a “monopoly on violence” and “legitimate violence” even exist?

Voluntarist, Bitarch

In their ideas, proponents of coercive state power refer to so-called permissible (or even allegedly necessary) or “legitimate” violence, the commission of which should be a monopoly of a single agent (the state) in society. However, as a rule, no clear definition is given as to exactly what violence can be considered permissible, necessary, or legitimate, and in whose hands it should be. Everything comes down to goals: whatever goals a particular etatist adheres to—within those frameworks, violence is justified for them, and the “monopoly” on violence should belong to them and/or those who share their specific views. This is not changed even by an adherence to democracy, since a democrat would want the monopoly on violence to belong specifically to the proponents of democracy; they simply do not consider it important what their views on other issues may be.

For this reason, there can be no talk of any specific legitimacy of violence. For instance, an authoritarian conservative must understand that, in the opinion of an authoritarian communist, his place is two meters underground, and vice versa. Every proponent of violence has their own understanding of its legitimacy, which cannot be agreed upon.

A monopoly on violence cannot exist at all as a model implemented in practice. A stationary bandit’s “monopoly” on violence is lost as soon as other people, even within the same state, take power into their own hands. There are no eternal governments; sooner or later, there is either a change in power or a change in the views of some members of the current power (who, of course, eliminate from political life their very own colleagues of yesterday who held the previous views). And with the help of violence in new hands, and violence whose legitimacy is now justified differently, the achievements of those who previously considered violence legitimate only within the framework of their own views and monopolistically belonging only to their own hands are destroyed.

Moreover, the monopoly on violence is quite often violated by those who commit it in a private capacity. As long as there are people in society capable of committing violence under certain circumstances, statements about possessing a monopoly right to it will be an exaggeration. After all, “illegitimate” perpetrators of violence may even attempt to stage a coup. Would proponents of monarchy or democracy consider the Bolsheviks’ understanding of the applicability of violence to be legitimate? No. But in practice, that would change nothing.

In reality, the state can possess only a “comparative advantage in the application of violence,” which is what Max Weber wrote in his definition of the state itself. But this formulation was misunderstood by many or simply misreported, which led to the concept of a “monopoly on violence,” which does not exist in reality. And possessing only a comparative advantage in violence, rather than a fictitious monopoly over it, the statist cannot in any way guarantee that violence will work in their favor—someday this tool will be taken from them and used with full force against them, their supporters, and their ideas. And this once again speaks to why the tool of free activity and voluntary agreement is better compared to the tool of force.

Is tax-free minarchism possible, where the state earns only from government services?

Anal Magician

This was again a very long question, but it seems I managed to compress it into a single sentence without any significant loss of meaning.

In general, the idea of transitioning to financing the state budget through payment for government services is good because the government thereby declares its intention to be useful—taking money only for what is in demand, and in the volume for which there is demand for its activity. Such a line of thinking among government officials, of course, should be encouraged. Let’s figure out what this might look like.

Purely theoretically, the sale of any services by the state can be either a monopoly or carried out within the framework of free competition with private companies.

Let’s start with services that are a natural monopoly of the state. Yes, such things really exist, and they are linked to the exploitation of the state as a unique brand. For example, a quite significant source of income for young Pacific states in the 20th century was the issuance and sale of postage stamps. Here, private entities cannot compete with the state in any way, because it is precisely the fact that the stamps are issued by the state that gives them collectible rarity. Any fool can color a piece of adhesive paper, but obtaining UN recognition as a state and then coloring a piece of adhesive paper is a completely different matter. I don’t know how much this business flourishes now with the advent of the internet, but stamps aren’t the only thing. The state can sell noble titles, tickets to military parades, and other market-demanded perks. Any such activity of a minarchist government can only be welcomed, even if the money earned is squandered on some harmless nonsense, like maintaining a royal court, rather than on what, according to minarchist myths, should be the exclusive prerogative of the state. What was it—courts, the army, and the police?

Besides government services that are natural monopolies, there is a much broader class of monopolies achieved by the forced exclusion of competitors. For example, a government service such as the sale of entry (or, even more so, exit) visas. While in the case of natural monopolies the buyer themselves wishes to purchase the service specifically from the state, in this case, they would gladly buy this service from a competitor if it were cheaper, and even more gladly prefer not to pay for this service at all—but simply enter the country without any visa. I presume you have already realized that we, the ancaps, cannot approve of dubious services of this sort, unlike corruption, which allows one to avoid their imposition.

Finally, there are services that the state could provide while competing with private entities. State clinics, schools, insurance companies, pension funds, television, and many, many other services. How, properly speaking, do they differ from private ones? In that their nominal owner turns out to be society as a whole, and in theory, all their profits should be spent exclusively on improving the services themselves, rather than being siphoned into the pockets of private owners. Theoretically, this could provide a new quality of service that would be difficult to achieve in the case of a private enterprise. For example, public television could sell only the absolute minimum of advertising, just to cover the channel’s costs. In practice, state companies of this sort will fall victim to the principal-agent problem and will act more in the interests of management than in the interests of society.

To summarize. The only type of government service that remains unconditionally legitimate in the eyes of ancaps is the market exploitation of the state as a brand. Other organizations with rich cultural traditions, such as churches, knightly orders, football clubs, or festivals, can operate on the same principles.

The state provides an exclusive market-demanded good, and that is wonderful!

When is the tragedy of the commons a good thing?

In the script for the video about the free-rider problem and the tragedy of the commons, I emphasized how bad this is for users of a shared resource and what strategies have been developed to combat it. Now, I want to talk about a case where the tragedy of the commons is actually a good thing, and fighting it is bad.

The entire focus is on what exactly constitutes the shared resource. Imagine a rare resource such as consumer demand. Everyone has the opportunity to produce a certain good or service, sell it, and make a profit. While the market is empty, a few producers will make superprofits, and the thirst for gain will attract many other suppliers to this patch. Competition for the consumer’s attention quickly leads to a decrease in margins. To maintain profit, volumes must be increased, and this finally exhausts the shared resource. The consumer receives an enormous abundance of cheap goods, which they are ready to push in the greatest possible quantity, as long as the consumer is willing to buy. Here is a “buy one get one free” promotion, here is an installment plan, here is a sale, here is unlimited access for a fixed subscription—just buy it.

Admit it, if you put yourself in the consumer’s shoes, this phenomenon cannot help but be pleasing. But the producer, for whom this is a terrible tragedy of the commons, tries to fight it. As we know from the video, two strategies are possible here: privatization and cooperation.

Privatization means the appropriation of consumer demand in a certain industry by a specific producer—in other words, the creation of a monopoly. Other suppliers are forbidden from selling certain goods and services to consumers. That’s it; now there is no need to chase sales volumes, and superprofits can be earned with fairly modest investments in production. However, part of the profit will have to be invested in protection against competitors, and they are not idling, so these costs will tend to increase.

Cooperation means that anyone can satisfy consumer demand, but a number of restrictions are imposed upon it. This is usually expressed in strict industry standards that effectively secure the dominant position of those players who are ready to invest significant capital into production, while outsiders are filtered out. However, a lot of attention must be paid to controlling that producers do not cheat. In this regard, a recent case comes to mind with some European auto concern that faked data on the exhaust emissions of its engines to save money on complying with environmental standards. But the classic example is, of course, medieval guilds. The quality of their goods was high, production volume was low, and profits were magnificent. Only the black market eventually undermined their dominant position, and a tragedy of the commons occurred, which we know as the Industrial Revolution.

So, when you are told about the harm of competition and the benefits of cooperation, as well as the inevitability of natural monopolies, it is important to understand: these people are quite sincere and not fools at all. It’s just that you are a resource to them.

A Christmas market is a tragedy of the commons in all its glory: consumers are happy, they are lured in with all their might, and they look more than they buy

Monopolies-2, review

On November 4, I was very sad. I am used to watching the broadcast of the Adam Smith readings held in Moscow every year, but this year the organizers deprived me of this opportunity for the first time, so I wish them a speedy removal and replacement. As I understand it, although the Adam Smith Center is formally responsible for this, in fact, the organization was entrusted to the same team that organized the summer debates between Shulman and Solovyov, as well as the lecture by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. These guys always disregard the broadcast and insist that no one else should conduct it. Monopolists, for goodness’ sake. Monopoly is expensive and bad. Always. Even if it is a monopoly on libertarianism or on organizing libertarian conferences. (Update: as I have been told, the team is actually different. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the refusal to provide a live broadcast remains a wrong move)

Fortunately, the Adam Smith Center does not have a monopoly on organizing libertarian conferences. On November 10, the second conference in the TED Talks format dedicated to monopolies took place in Moscow. The conference is conducted by the Moscow branch of the Tea Club. It is known that the LPR has rather strained relations with the Tea Club, but it is precisely thanks to their competition that we have more high-quality educational content online, so we can only welcome their rivalry.

Alas, the Tea Club also failed to provide a broadcast, but on the other hand, they began publishing recordings of the speeches on November 16 and finished on November 27. The recordings are collected in a playlist; I watched them all at once today and, as per tradition, will briefly go through all of them.

  1. Dmitry Kornienko. How the state teaches history. This discusses specifically the experience of the Russian state, without invoking foreign examples. Mention is made of an important difference between Soviet education and modern Russian education: the monopoly on knowledge has disappeared, although the monopoly on education has remained. One can lie, but students will know that you are lying and have no reason to remain silent about it. Thus, the tasks of forming a unified understanding of history have become more difficult, and, in essence, the state monopoly is ceasing to cope with them.
  2. Igor Drandin. Monopoly on discourse. Igor has extensive experience in the unpleasant role of being the liberal punching bag on federal TV channels; he shares the secrets of this non-trivial profession and speaks about the pros and cons of appearing on television. The most compelling argument presented by Igor is that TV debates are a very tough school of debating, and it is foolish to refuse such training if enemies practice this exercise daily. For instance, Navalny lost in debates to Girkin, Svetov to Kagarlitsky and Roizman—they lack the skill, as blogging and lecturing train one for something entirely different. Meanwhile, in public politics, the skill of debating is just as useful as the skill of speaking at rallies. I will note, however, that television itself is unnecessary for acquiring such skills, and it would be great if Drandin himself could find a way to pass these acquired skills to those politicians who did not participate in TV debates.
  3. Vyacheslav Shirinkin. Monopoly on a favorite band. Not all monopolization processes are linked to the state. Vyacheslav talks about various psychological aspects related to people’s love for exclusivity, as well as how to break into a market with a high barrier to entry.
  4. Vadim Novikov. To be or not to be for antitrust in Russia? Unfortunately, the recording turned out to be ruined, and the sound is very poor. The main thesis of the report: there is no point in tackling complex cases until the simple ones are sorted out. First, defeat protectionism in foreign policy, then try to defeat it in the domestic market.
  5. Roman Yuneman. Electoral monopoly. A candidate who won the elections to the Moscow City Duma shows in detail how the tool used to take away his victory is unlike an engine for fair elections, and why it is now important not only to contest the election results of a specific district in court but also to prevent the flawed practice of electronic voting from spreading across the entire country. The report is especially useful for the heralds of technological progress as a sort of sobriety check: if the goal is to counter falsifications, then simple mechanisms are better than complex ones.

And again about the monopoly

This question was inspired by an article on Habr and the subsequent comments. The gist is: there is Yandex — they have a search engine. In the search engine, they promote their other products, thereby limiting competition. How correct is this? In the article and comments themselves, there are quite a few arguments IN FAVOR of antitrust legislation. What do you think?

анонимный вопрос

In connection with this question, I would like to recommend Vyacheslav Kostrov’s lecture “Platform Economy and the Hayekian Market Process,” delivered by him at the “Capitalism and Freedom” conference in 2019.

The lecture is very rambling and contains no conclusions, but it places the question you are asking into a broader frame — it considers not a specific case of using a dominant market position, but the principles of the functioning of the platform economy as such.

Let’s consider a platform such as a search engine. By design, it is a service that searches the web for mentions of information that interests the user, based on certain input data provided by the user. After attracting a sufficiently large number of users with the convenience of the service and the quality of the search, the owner of the search engine may raise the question of monetizing the platform.

The most direct way to monetize a service in its original form is through customer donations. This method is implemented by Wikipedia, and it allows it to focus its efforts on the completeness of content and the neatness of its presentation, that is, on improving exactly those consumer qualities of the supplied product for which the user came to the platform. Of course, Wikipedia is not a search engine in the pure sense, but theoretically, nothing prevents the use of the same model for classic search engines. My channel practices this method of monetization.

A search engine could also sell analytics on user search queries to interested clients. This is also a fairly “herbivorous” way to make money and, as in the case of Wiki, is unlikely to bring in mega-bucks. My channel also practices this method of monetization in a sense — these are answers to questions with attached donations and commissioned articles.

Next come the methods of earning money whose application degrades the product itself.

First, there is advertising. In addition to providing the user with what they are searching for, the search engine slips into the results something that the advertiser would like them to be introduced to. Thus, for the user, the product becomes worse due to the lower relevance of the results, but the platform owner gets a profit. I no longer practice this method, and if a request to sell advertising on the channel appears, I try to switch the requester to one of the monetization methods mentioned above.

And finally, the owners of the search engine may start earning not only from others’ advertising, but also lure the user to their own subsidiary services that have no direct relation to the search engine. This is exactly what we see in the article under discussion. As a result of such a policy, search results become even less relevant for the user, and they start looking toward DuckDuckGo, but before the user has completely fled the search engine, the subsidiary platforms, thanks to the inertia of human thinking, will manage to build their own customer base. I do not practice this either, but I can well imagine a blogger periodically advertising some own business on their channel.

As a result of the development of such a mega-platform, after some time it turns out that some businesses under the general brand are more profitable, others less, and some are completely loss-making. However, making decisions about optimizing the asset structure is quite difficult because they influence each other. The platform flounders, making increasingly less balanced decisions, until it finally goes belly up. Just relatively recently, one such behemoth of the platform economy went bankrupt — Cook’s outfit, which existed for over a century and a half. It was the first to implement the package principle for organizing tourist trips, thanks to which it quickly became a global hegemon in the tourism industry, and it ultimately burned out on exactly that: too many of its assets, instead of reacting to market stimuli, were engaged in serving other subsidiary companies of the holding. Its own airlines, its own hotels, its own tour operators — it would seem, here is a monopoly, just collect the rent — but no, it failed to keep up with progress and lost to a conditional Booking.com, a next-generation platform business.

Exactly the same fate will befall Yandex, without any antitrust authorities.

Monopolies are returning

About three weeks ago, among other things, I happened to announce an event by the Tea Club with the long title “The Splendor and Misery, Fear and Hatred of Monopolies.” At the time, I complained to the club that their previous event had been poorly recorded and expressed hope that they would succeed on their second attempt. In short, they succeeded.

Recordings of all five speakers’ presentations have been posted and collected in a playlist on the Tea Club’s YouTube channel (by the way, please subscribe). It contains only the lectures, without the Q&A sessions, so it’s quite compact, which motivates one to attend such events in person whenever possible.

I will briefly share my impressions.

  1. Alexander Litreev. Monopoly in the Network. He discussed how the state, in its attempts to monopolize internet censorship, constantly swings for a dollar but hits for not just a penny, but rather millions of rubles in losses for innocent parties, all while completely failing to achieve its actual goals. It was delivered energetically; I learned a few new things, although mostly well-known facts were presented.
  2. Sergey Zhavoronkov. Can a Monopoly Be Useful?. He explains the difference between market and non-market monopolies, and why the former are not scary, while the latter cannot be cured by antitrust laws. My impression was mixed: Sergey distorted the plot of the trampoline case, confusing the Altai Krai with the Altai Republic, and a square with a shopping center—in short, it would have been better to stick to a simple mention without a retelling. Otherwise, suspicions arise as to whether he was mistaken in the details of less-known historical anecdotes, and then the logic itself can be called into question.
  3. Matvey Tzen. Monopoly on Violence. The longest lecture, but the most saturated with various little-known historical anecdotes. He talks about the difference between positive and natural law, the difference between laws and law enforcement practice, why Weber, with all due respect to his merits as a sociologist, is not particularly revered today in legal terms, but most importantly—why the state dislikes grassroots initiatives to help the state. I liked it very much.
  4. Egor Zhigarev. Is There a Monopoly in the Video Game Market?. The most compact presentation on the most specialized topic. In short, the industry is highly competitive, and no matter how hard market agents try, none of them have managed to even come close to a monopoly.
  5. Alexey Markov. The Splendor and Misery of Monopolies. Also a narrative very rich in historical anecdotes. He discusses the history of the very concept of monopoly, and how they were initially perceived as an unconditional good, while the idea of the benefit of competition is a merit of later economists. He analyzed cases of several monopolies, from the Russian Company to Gazprom, and how they all decayed. He also touched upon a specific case of monopoly, such as the patent monopoly, and where that can lead.

In short, the experience turned out to be very successful, and now the organizers want to make it a regular occurrence. The format was named TNT – Tea’n’talks. An announcement for the second part of “Monopolies” has already been posted on the newly created TNT page on the Tea Club website.

So as not to weary the readers, I will probably announce further events in this genre very selectively, so you’re on your own from here on. I hope you enjoy them.

How will private utilities work? After all, there is only one pipeline, so how can water be supplied to everyone at different prices?

анонимный вопрос

I answered a similar question in quite some detail analyzing all stages of water supply in a free market, from finding a water source to its delivery via pipes to the end consumer. But you are not so much interested in how various market actors will negotiate the coordination of geological exploration, extraction, pipe laying, and repair—but rather what mechanisms will affect the tariffs for the end consumer. And, presumably, you have a concern that without central controlling bodies, tariffs will skyrocket.

Here, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the analysis of such a mechanism for electricity supplies that I provided previously. For the water market, the hard upper limit for tariffs turns out to be the cost of water production or supply by the consumers themselves: this could be buying bottled water in a store, collecting rainwater, desalination, recycling—depending on who the consumer is. But slightly before the price hits this natural barrier, the factors of competition and demand elasticity will kick in: expensive water will be conserved, and at a certain point, the supplier will realize that it is more profitable to earn from volume rather than markups, especially if alternative water suppliers do not jack up their prices and seize the market while the miser tries to squeeze their few remaining clients dry.

At the same time, of course, I do not rule out that water will be supplied to different houses by one company at different prices, taking into account the length of the pipes, for example, or the different competitive environment in different districts. Finally, a price markup is also added by the company that manages the building, if such a company exists. For instance, in Thailand, where I vacationed in the spring, it seems that every condominium has its own water price, because in one they water the garden, in another the pool is larger, in a third it is smaller, and so on. This is normal.

Here is an example of a condominium where water will certainly be expensive

Lectures in Moscow and the regions

The peak of political activity among citizens in the country is coming to an end, for better or worse: the elections are over, the results are known almost everywhere, so Russian libertarians are habitually switching from politics to education, which, of course, always pleases me.

There are about a month and a half left until the annual Adam Smith Readings, but so far last year’s program is still on the Readings website. Those who are still deciding whether to go or not can watch the recording of the 2018 Readings. It is truly a non-trivial choice—between being physically present in the heat and crowd and watching a recording in comfort, but in terrible quality.

In general, it seems that many organizers of public lectures put maximum effort into ensuring there are no glitches during the performance itself—but they lack the strength to ensure a high-quality recording or, even better, a broadcast. Not long ago, I advertised a lecture by Fariza Rodriguez in St. Petersburg, and when the recording finally appeared, I was disgusted for a long time because it was unwatchable.

Mikhail Svetov decided to set a record and organize a large lecture tour across the regions: 29 cities in 34 days, from September 15 to October 18. The performance schedule is posted on his website; you can find out if your city is there and register on the same page. Registration should not be neglected because the first lectures have already shown that Svetov is no longer a “no-name” to the current regime; his activities are monitored and hindered whenever possible. So, at the last moment, you might receive a notification about a change of location or something similar. Of course, you cannot expect a high-quality recording of Svetov’s lectures, so come in person.

As you may have noticed in Svetov’s performance schedule, there is a mysterious three-day pause from October 4 to 7. No, it is not a day off. Mikhail felt that one challenge was not enough, and during this very time, he is bringing Hans-Hermann Hoppe to Moscow. The performance of the living classic of libertarianism is expected on October 6; details are available from Mikhail in his channel.

And for those who find it boring to receive announcements three weeks in advance, I have saved for last the announcement of a cool event that will take place in Moscow this coming Saturday, September 21. The organizers couldn’t decide whether to borrow the title of a Balzac book or a Terry Gilliam film for the event, so they took both. It turned out a bit long: The Splendor and Misery, Fear and Loathing of Monopolies. This is a full-fledged conference in the TED Talks format. Four speakers are mentioned in the channel, but in fact, as of today, agreements have already been made with five, and it’s not impossible that more will appear. You can read about the speakers and the topics of the presentations in the organizers’ channel or download the conference program.

I want to separately note that although the venue is Moscow, the conference organizer is the Tea Club. As we know, no network organization in Russia can claim federal status until it conquers the capital; this is especially evident in supermarket chains or, say, restaurants. So, I am watching this bold bid by the St. Petersburg club with great interest, because in this way, they might eventually reach me in the provinces. I hope they manage to organize a decent recording this time, and if you send them some donations, the chances of this increase. Donation details are provided in the same place, in the announcement on the club’s channel.

As is known, there are no monopolies in a free market

But how then should we view Google, Facebook, and YouTube, which are monopolists in their respective spheres: search engines, social networks, and video platforms? Yes, there are Russian analogues like VK or Yandex, but that is all local, and overall, the world still uses these three monopolists, and their imminent decline is not yet expected.

Howard Roark

Indeed, there are tools that have a massive network effect; in other words, the more people who use them, the more beneficial it is for them to use them. This applies to money, language, as well as other communication tools such as social networks.

Many entrepreneurs try to guess exactly which offer will be so in demand by users that they will be willing to pay for it. Some guess better than others. The creators of Facebook guessed that some people are willing to pay to show their own content to a crowd, while others will gladly pay for information on user preferences. The creators of YouTube guessed that some people are willing to pay to show commercials in other people’s videos, and others — to watch videos without ads. The creators of Google guessed that people would more readily buy targeted advertising rather than the kind that blasts areas indiscriminately.

We do not know which consumer needs people will be willing to pay for tomorrow. Neither do the owners of the internet giants. Today, the YouTube administration assumes that blocking accounts with information unpleasant to advertisers is a good idea, but tomorrow it may turn out that people are more willing to pay for freedom of expression. Today, Facebook is developing the trade of big data, and tomorrow it will find that people pay more for privacy. Today, Google is satisfied with its ad targeting algorithms, and tomorrow it will turn out that an outsider has come up with something better, and for some reason, this startup does not wish to be bought out.

In a free market, there can be the dominance of certain standards, and for us consumers, this is very convenient. And when it starts to feel restrictive, some Durov inevitably appears and whispers: why do you need these social networks, switch from the needle of publicity to an anonymous messenger. Come on, you answer Durov, how can one live without VK? And a year later, it turns out that you even brush your teeth via Telegram. That is how it works; this is creative destruction.

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