@atpfm just got around to the episode, and I just want to point out that John’s idea that market competition is enough to motivate companies to provide better service is pretty outdated, if not outright false, for a lot of very complicated economics reasons. The simplest one is that there is always a sort of prisoner’s dilemma where companies realize that if they all offer the same level of bad service, they can all cut costs (1/2)

@atpfm (2/2) John actually mentioned a good example of this, which is with airlines. 20 years ago (and even today if you fly internationally) you had a dozen different airline choices to reach any major destination, and yet my memory as someone who flew 4-5 times a year with my family was that they all had bad service. You have a similar situation with washing machines nowadays. Companies m refuse to act in their own long-term best interest when they can superficially increase short-term profits