Knightshade
Well-Known Member
It can technically happen in the sense that given enough time, and ignoring of enough anti-trust laws, nations protectionism, general consumer behavior, and more it's physically possible.
But in a slew of actual real world senses it can't, and certainly not in the time frames some folks envision it happening.
Airbus would like a word with you on this one.
And "dominated" is a far cry from "supplies 100% of the product to the entire world" isn't it?
They had the majority of market share for a while- but were never the ONLY company in the market.
Software is going to be your best argument.... Windows is another one.
But they're still only a little over 90% of the market (and there's obviously a lot of massive differences between a digital service/software and an entire line of physical products that must be built and distributed and maintained worldwide)-- and for Windows the share's only that big because in significant parts of the world people just stole the product.
Again software, digital service not physical product... but their market share was never even as high as the last 2 examples
Outside of Windows and Google- not as tiny as you seem to think.
And I'm not sure how "Sure competitors exist" support your claim there's no evidence that "one company cannot produce all the world's cars on it's own" is valid.
In fact it seems to directly contradict it.
If there's ALWAYS competitors, even with relatively small share, then one company CANNOT produce ALL the worlds supply.
And again, outside of non-tangible goods, none of your examples were really THAT dominant, and never for all that long.... (Xerox dominance in copiers in the 60s had already shrunk to a minority of the market by 1981 for example)
Now Henry Ford would like a word with you.
Fords Model T at one point was 96% of the affordable car market (and the majority of the ENTIRE car market)-- so much so that from 1917 and 1923 Ford famously spent $0 on advertising
Even then there were still others supplying cars, and again the dominance didn't last.
None of this is to doubt Tesla is on a path to develop major market share.
And that we'll see a fair number of legacy auto companies fail to make the transition.
But even Elons most optimistic estimates have them getting to roughly 1/4 of the average new vehicle sales annually before end of decade.... some folks think the counter to that is annual sales will drop off so that the ~20 million Teslas made a year at that point become a larger % of total sales- there's likely some truth to that, but probably not to the degree that 20 million is even half of all new sales, let alone ALL of em.
