You couldn't have chosen a worse example for a "tight oligopoly"... I just opened a online used car website to count the number of different car brands for sale, it was over 80... If we remove the more niche brands, we still end up with well over 20 "mainstream" brands spanning 3 continents.
It seems to me that the customer still has some choice in the matter, and can entrust (or not) his hard owned cash to whatever manufacturer he chooses.
The car market and the used car market are not the same. They do overlap occasionaly, but differ greatly when it comes to regulation, sellers, etc. A single product can be traded on more than one market. Apart from that, the used car market makes absolutely zero sense in the context of our discussion since it does zero R&D. It just resells existing products.
The car market is the prime example of a tight oligopoly. There are even more attributes, but I don't want to go to deep into macroeconomics.
I am one of those, and yes I do have to deliver what the customer wanted if I expect to get paid.
Interesting, if I'd do what the customer wants I'd probably do double the work for half the price. Scopecreep is a ...
No, they became more energy efficient because customers want to spend less on their electricity bill. When I buy a new fridge I go for max energy efficiency want to save money on my bills, not because I give a toss about what the government wants.
Cool, and the max energy efficiency would still be bad, if it weren't regulated. Whether you give a toss about what the government wants or not is completely irrelevant, you're not that important. The producer of said household appliances on the opposite do very much give a toss about what the government wants, or else they go out of business fast or need to sell their stock abroad.
Indeed R&D is not directly tied to money, but like everything else it is far more efficient in the private sector. You see the push to strive for efficiency comes a lot quicker when you got your own finite money on the line to achieve goals (private sector), as opposed to having an infinite stream of someone else's money (state). Even NASA, probably one the the best state owned institutions in the whole world, with some of the best minds on the planet working there, was beaten by SpaceX, a much, much younger private company at coming up with a way to make space launches magnitudes cheaper.
You're half right and half wrong here.
Private companies can definitely amass the funds and necessary minds to make significant progress, IF there's a realistic prospect of profiting from that progress in the short or medium term. Most companies can simply not afford to do basic research and most of those who do, do so in cooperation with institutions of the respective nation(s) they're operating in.
Don't get me wrong, what SpaceX did is awesome, but what led to it's sucess is mainly Elon Musks financial power, patience and seventy years of prior experience in space travel thanks to the NASA. To say, that NASA was 'beaten' by SpaceX is like saying that Tesla or Edison were beaten by Zuse. It's debatable about whether SpaceX gets subsidized by the US government for strategic reasons like Boeing (and respectively Airbus by the EU). Dividing politics and economy is not that easy. Both need each other.
Take for example fusion, because you mentioned it in a previous post. There's a reason why the ITER, the Wendelstein 7X and all the other test reactors aren't in private hand. No company in the world has the necessary funds to undertake research projects of such a scale. The invisible hand of the market doesn't think in terms that long, rather it doesn't think at all.
If you expect any kind of effective solution to climate issues (or any serious issues) to be put forward from the governments of any country, you might as well make your peace right now with the alleged end of the world.
Pressure from the public will sooner or later lead to the government accepting and implementing pragmatic solutions. Activism is a big part of that. I don't like Greta Thunberg either, because her whole demeanor feels just unsympathetic and too much focused on generating outrage. But climate change is an existential threat to our societies, even if we don't die out or revert back to the stone ages and it's undoubtly Thunbergs right to promote her views. A large part of the reason why we have this problem in the first place are certain companies of the private sector like Exxon which held back scientific studies and results in order to protect their business interests.
Look, if I'd see the cost of destroying our environment reflected in prices, I would without a doubt believe you that the private sector scrambles to find a solution to climate change and the sustainability problem. But that's not the case and the only entities powerful enough to counteract that are the nationstates. The companies will hardly limit themselves and I'm not believing that we'll make some magic major breakthrough in fusion in the next 10 years, that'll solve all our energy problems.
@Becks, out of curiosity, you don't happen to be a bureaucrat (work in the government) do you?
Nope.
). I've worked for government, semi-government and private sector in four different sectors (healthcare, education, IT and local IRS) and the notion that in the private sector management is more efficient because they care about not wasting 'their own money' is just laughable. That notion only exist in small (and arguably medium-sized) enterprises where management actually does has its own money on the line. The more you scale upwards the more that line is blurred, until you reach the ultimate goal where losses are socialized and profits are privatized (eg. banking). Middle management at Google had exactly the same mentality as middle management at the Ministry of Finance or the in-patient facility I worked: try to hit some abstract targets you received from upstairs, without any insight into how this connects with any long-term vision or strategy, while going through the day hoping for as little drama as possible while doing a good enough job to not get fired. That is it.
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