alt Hacker NewsOops I forgot to respond to the other things you mentioned. That list of removed obstacles is technically correct, but it misses that those things were mostly subsidized
1. Regarding transportation, the interstate highway system and the containerization infrastructure (ports, dredging, naval security) were massive state subsidies to long-distance distribution. If Walmart had to pay the full property tax and maintenance cost of every mile of road their trucks used, their economies of scale would evaporate instantly. The state artificially lowered the cost of long distance shipping below the cost of local production. That isn't efficiency, but the taxpayer subsidizing the inefficiency of moving a toothbrush 3,000 miles. (Carson called these "diseconomies of scale")
2. The Uneeda Biscuit era of mass production created a crisis in that high fixed costs meant factories had to run 24/7 to be profitable, they couldn't wait for orders but had to force product onto the market. This required the state to intervene again via imperialism and arguably the creation of a consumer culture to absorb the surplus in the form of advertising and other means.
3. Computers are the most ironic part; Computers and CNC tools actually destroyed the rationale for the large factory, made it possible for a garage shop to produce with the same precision as a General Motors plant ("Homebrew Industrial Revolution" book by Kevin Carson again which in my mind is not one of his most defensible but it's still interesting).
I would argue that IP was the main reason that small shops didn't take over. As physical capital costs dropped, the state ramped up IP laws (patents/copyrights) to protect corporate hierarchies from the decentralization computers should have caused. I think that Big Tech isn't Big because of hardware efficiency but because of the state-enforced monopoly on information
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IP has subtle things going against it, which you should certainly analyze more.. eg University research teams have IP too, but no clear network effect (maybe even an anti-network effect?)
To me the overall "anti-network effect" for Big Tech looks like the metatheory Krugman proposed to explain enshittification. The initial ramp up can come from proprietary code, hiring power, regulatory capture, branding, anything really, but especially a synthesis of all these
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/api/v1/file/7510035f-d377-4...
> If Walmart had to pay the full property tax and maintenance cost of every mile of road their trucks used
There's everyone else who uses the road, too.
Lots of railroads were built with private money for various purposes.
These days, even the government doesn't seem capable of building railroads. There's Caltrain, and in Seattle it's taking decades to build a few miles of light rail, at a cost that exceeds the GDP of Norway. Well, maybe not quite that much (!) but it sure seems like it.