[ExI] stargate

[Adrian Tymes]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2025 at 6:58 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Jan 2025 at 09:27, efc--- via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Nothing new here... they are trying to "commoditize your complement" to
>> ensure no one gets the ultimate prize and power.
>>
>> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mbYX3JnohWRF8KTT2/tech-economics-pattern-commoditize-your-complement
>>
>
> I found this article a bit difficult to understand (I am not an economist).
> So I asked DeepSeek R1 to explain the web page
>

 Tch.  I can do it much more concisely.

So, you know how there are monopolies, right?  Companies that dominate a
certain industry, charge customers much more than it actually costs to make
stuff (and make large profits by doing so), get away with it because
there's no one else to provide the same stuff for closer to said actual
cost, and will sometimes take actions to maintain their status?

Products and services often feed into other products and services.  For
example, Microsoft's Disk Operating System (and later Windows) ran on
various computers like IBM's PC.  IBM also tried making an operating
system, OS/2, which could have threatened Microsoft's dominance.  So,
Microsoft helped make sure there were lots of PC makers, and that customers
knew that all of them could run DOS and Windows.  IBM failed to do the same
with OS/2.  As a result, Microsoft's operating system monopoly held up,
while IBM was unable to use its former dominance of hardware to make much
headway in the operating system market.  Today, few other operating systems
have been able to rise to challenge Windows. while personal computer
hardware has mostly become a commodity market with lots of competitors.

Other companies noticed and copied this behavior.  For example, Google has
gotten into several markets adjacent to online advertising, so as to
prevent companies focused on those markets from being able to spread into
online advertising.  That, in a nutshell, is what it means to commoditize
the complement, where the "complement" is "markets that serve and/or are
served by what your company is focused on".
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