[Urbane Guerrilla]

Michael Medved has an interesting comment about GM's lack of innovation, attributing it to their being in chronic fear of being hit with a major antitrust suit. Senior management, he says, was supposed to let up on competitiveness to keep GM market share below fifty percent, typically about forty-five, and thus stay below the trustbuster radar. This meant, don't claw after that next half percent of market share by any of the competitive means, such as marketing ingenuity, price wars, or technical innovation. The eventual result was technical sclerosis for several decades and then slumping product quality, as everybody in the firm found other concerns than customer service, maintaining customer loyalty by making such things actually palpably beneficial, or really anything that makes a company a good one. Contrast that kind of attitude with, say, what goes on at your local Trader Joe's.

Makes you rethink the whole antitrust idea -- after all, is not the free market itself firmly and naturally anti-monopoly, as trust busting is alleged to be? Why, then, should it be required to bring suit against a business simply because it is successful in a very large way? What that really is is a pointer that says There's a really big market over here. Wanna get into it? Competitors barrel-roll in, many with what they hope is improved or just plain better technology than the pioneer outfit is using, to fill this need that has come up.

Five Big Lies About American Business is one heckuva book.