> industrial did they mean "manufacturing"? And just how much more
> concentrated could aircraft, tires, petroleum refining, soap and other
> detergents, etc. get?
<<The thing is, none of those industries operate even remotely like the vertically-integrated giants of yore, where one firm dug iron ore, smelted steel, and assembled cars, all at once. Airbus and Boeing sit on top of vast global supplier networks, some of which are multibillion dollar firms themselves; tens of thousands of firms produce the parts which go into cars; computers are made the same way. Even Microsoft and Intel make up less than 15% of the software and CPU biz, for example, not even close to the glory days of the Rockefellers. Which isn't to say the market doesn't radically homogenize and flatten out human experience (all those TVs and cable channels and yet there's nothing on).>>>
Couldn't some of that industrial diversity be more apparent than real? E.g. in some industries there may be lots of suppliers making inputs, but if there are only a few end buyers, isn't this just a rearrangement of production in which end buyers are better able to squeeze suppliers with less cost (e.g. if you don't own the plant, you don't have to worry about it being regulated, if you don't employ the workers, you don't have to worry about them going on strike.) The Nike business model...
I mean, if there used to be 3 car companies making everything that went into a car, and now there are still three, but they merely put together cars from pieces made by other companies - that may look like monopoly power has decreased because there are more players in the industry as a whole - but has actual economic power been parted out along with the parting out of jobs to suppliers?
I don't know, just asking -
Les