The key question that is missing in the article - efficient for whom, buyers or sellers? Too often (but not always), business is a zero sum game. Make customers pay 20% more without extra cost and your business will be 100% more profitable (assuming 20% profitability). Or, which happens more often, cheapen quality/cost by 20% while retaining the price, and your profitability doubles.
Competition is supposed to enforce efficiency on sellers, but the temptation to cheapen quality is just too big, because it turns out customers are less picky than they should've been in theory, and are ready to give up quality for something free (as free social network) or cheaper (as cheaper sugar-laden food). So when your competitor cheapens quality and it goes down well with the customers, what else can you do besides watching your market share shrinks?
The efficient for whom par is clearly stated all along, with even a direct mention:
> and (for the business) efficient
Otherwise on the bigger point about competition: it doesn’t seem to me the landscapes are that tight, except when you’re in the efficiency game.
If your target is Amazon, you’re in for a ride and can leave your ethics in the closet. If your goal is to find a viable niche where you can grow with your customers, you won’t be in a zero-sum, drive the prices to the ground kind of rat race.
Finding that kind of niche if of course far from easy, now I’d argue a rat race to become the next Amazon isn’t either.
An article I read recently makes a similar point on maximizing only one side of supply and demand and the effects for consumers and “quality”, in this case, how animals are killed. Good read: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/7/8/21311327/farmers...
Competition is supposed to enforce efficiency on sellers, but the temptation to cheapen quality is just too big, because it turns out customers are less picky than they should've been in theory, and are ready to give up quality for something free (as free social network) or cheaper (as cheaper sugar-laden food). So when your competitor cheapens quality and it goes down well with the customers, what else can you do besides watching your market share shrinks?
EDITED: typos.