Simon Johnson: belief

Transcript context

…From my point of view, it seems that you and Daron overestimate how much market concentration matters. There’s one passage you have where you’re criticizing the soft drink market for being highly concentrated. Coca-Cola dominates and so on. But I used Google, I used GPT, and everything I could find tells me the price of soft drinks, in real terms, has been falling. There’s also a lot more choice. You go to an airport, you see this long array of hideously colored things that I don’t even want to touch, but they’re not, in general, put out by Coca-Cola. Variety is going up, and if real price is falling compared to inflation, why be upset about concentration in the soft-drink market? Oh, I think that was just an attempt to illustrate what market concentration means, Tyler. Perhaps I’ll go back and look and see if we need to insert some errata on that. In general, we are just trying to get across the point that if concentration prevents innovation, if concentration prevents development of varieties, if concentration keeps prices high — and of course, there’s a long history of concentration in various sectors where some aspects of that is true — then it’s problematic. If it’s fully satisfying the consumers, and if you have enough progress innovation in a particular sector, then yes, sure, there’s less to object to. What do you think is the main thing you changed your mind on over the course of writing this book?…

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