I thought I listed a bunch of cases where there were options (and not monopolies). But yes, 100% inside many ecosystems are monopolies, and those ecosystems/walled gardens have been slowly expanding every chance these companies have.

I’m saying the competition can only exist because products that actually fill the same need.

If you decide that you need product A, and have multiple options on where to get that, you have competition.

So if you’re looking for a Cola, you have options.

If you’re looking to play StardewValley, you have options where you want to buy it and which platform you want to play it on, you don’t need to buy a new game system to play it.

If you’re looking to play the latest Zelda game, you don’t have options, you need to buy a Switch.

If you’re looking to watch Ozarks, you don’t have options, you can only watch Netflix.

If you’re looking to just have something playing on TV and don’t really care what it is, you have options.

If you’re looking to listen to music, you have options, most of the steaming services have most of the music.

If you’re looking to be able to text friends, you have options, any phone will work.

If you’re looking to be able to iMessage friends and for your case only iMessage will work, iPhone is your only option.

Competition is complex and is more dependent on a consumer needs than just classification of what a product is. In your earlier point you used Apple as an example of a company that can increase prices despite competition, but really Apple is a prime example of a company putting up walls to an ecosystem making it really hard to leave once you’re in.

Generally in the current tech landscape there barely is any competition outside openish platforms. But with tech, you often can’t look at competition as product A vs Product B. Like while we can say that Window competes with OSx, it’s harder to say that a Mac laptop competes with a given Dell laptop (because what you can do with each OS is different to different people).

This is why I like to think of all the tv streaming services as different types of food stores. There is no supermarket that supplies everything, you’re forced to have memberships to the single butcher, the single milk man, the single bakery, etc. if you want a particular food, there is currently no (or very little) competition. You can certainly survive on just bread, and people are happy to do that, but that bakery can and will increase prices whenever because they aren’t really competing with the butcher.

I still think you’re looking at competition slightly wrong.

Coke and Pepsi do compete with eachother, along with the rest of the drink market. And overall prices in that industry are pretty low, some people will buy other competitors (the store brand Cola’s). But overall competition is working.

Apple only kinda competes. Sure a phone is a phone and a laptop is a laptop. But unless someone is entering the market for the first time. They already have applications they are looking to use, so if you need an iPhone, you need an iPhone, and same for a Mac. But if you’re an android or Windows user, suddenly you have a lot more choice because there is lots of competition!

The reason companies setup walled gardens, or pay for exclusive access to a piece of media is to erode competition. If a user wants that thing, they can only get it from that one place.

It’s only competition if they provide similar products.

The current landscape is like farmers markets and butchers. Sure they both provide food, but they don’t really directly compete with eachother.

A properly sized natural gas tankless works pretty well.

Electric tankless on the otherhand take so much power I can’t imagine anyone actually installs them in a home.

He’s assuming based of you suggesting the guy in the article do something less great than what he actually ended up doing.

On a similar note.

Just because a politician looking to be voted into power suggests a simple solution for something, don’t blindly assume that solution will actually have any impact.

For anyone not reading the article.

The truck came with an 80 AMP charger (I’m assuming it’s the one that also lets the truck power the house).

His house is currently only a 100 AMP service, so he would need to update the panel to 200 AMP.

The transformer his house uses and shared with his neighbors is already at capacity and would need to be upgraded (that’s the bulk of the 12k charge)

He ended up installing a different 30AMP charger which is still more than he needs (I believe he also acknowledged that the 15 AMP household outlet would also have worked for his needs)

I’ve been using fizz for 4 or so years.

They use Videotrons network. You’re covered well in the Ottawa area. Elsewhere in Canada you roam on the other carriers, but you’re able to use your plan as you always would. You only get charged more if you roam more than you’re at home for 3 months in a row.

Overall I’m very happy with the service. Data rollover is such an amazing thing.

What would you do differently from what was talked about in the article?

What drives me crazy is that the population growth we’re seeing now isn’t even all that crazy.

It’s a bit higher right now, but it’s not a significant outlier when plotted on a graph going back 50 years.

Yes over the last 20 years immigration has been consuming a larger portion of that fairly consistent pie, but assuming we didn’t stop having kids 20 years ago we would be in a similar spot as we are today.

The real problem is that we stopped building housing. The rate of houses being built slowed down a few decades ago, and that was always going to be cause us problems, regardless of if we had stopped immigration, but had we done that, our population stagnating would have caused us other problems.

I tried to find a source for your comment and couldn’t find anything based off the limited details you gave.

Do you have a proper source? Or are you by chance just making things up like so many on this platform?

Seems unlikely

End of the pandemic. Which in this case means we have an effective vaccine, and as long as people get the damn thing COVID seems to stop killing people at such a high rate.

It’s sooooo frustrating that we’re in the tail end of a global pandemic and people still don’t understand how community immunity works.

In much of Canada flu shots are provided for free annually. So ya it’s typical for us to have comprehensive booster programs for all ages.

I imagine regular COVID boosters will continue until COVID is integrated into the standard flu vaccine.

Don’t forget that COVID is still killing significantly more people annually than typical influenza.

Did the public transit investments stop? From what I’ve seen they have been throwing money at public transit projects, is there news that they are pulling back from that?

The transition from rural to urban has been happening for the last 100 years and it’s going to keep happening.

But we can’t just ignore the 15-20% of the population who are currently rural and act like they can just move into a city and it would solve all problems.

If someone lives 20km outside of a city, they are barely rural.

I appreciate the desire to have better public transit whereever we can, but ignoring the existing realities isn’t helpful.

I’m wondering if that’s what this legislation will do.

It’s focused on ensuring that a target % of all cars a manufacturer sells be electric. And in order to do that, they need to get more people to choose to buy electric.

They can achieve that by raising the prices of their ICE vehicles and selling less overall volume, but the proportion of EVs would be higher. or the seemingly easier option would be to create more cheaper EV options that people are interested in buying.

And in your case you’re likely breaking even or getting a little back from the carbon pricing system.

You as the consumer isn’t been told fuck you. You’re being slightly incentivised to make better choices, and rewarded if you do, but not penalized if you don’t.