Yes, SO had a lower cost structure in many cases. But efficiency is not the determining factor for antitrust behavior. That’s the chink in Chernows perspective: he focuses almost solely of efficiency argument and ignores the larger context.

And not to be snarky, but that’s the same pattern you take whether you defend Rockefeller, Musk, or any other business magnate. There’s a narrative you identify with and you’ll stick to it almost to the point of circular reasoning.

If your claim is that someone needs to have 100% market to be anti-competitive, we’re talking past each other. I know HN can have relatively high levels of binary thinking, but the real world is more complicated and nuanced.

X doesn’t have to perpetually lose money, just long enough to put Y out of business. Modern definitions of predatory pricing did not exist at the time, but that is essentially what Standard Oil was found guilty of in their day. They can also lose market share as new markets emerge but that doesn’t undermine the monopoly argument. If I have a utility in TX and another utility opens in CA, my regulated monopoly is still intact.

Rockefeller was known to deliberately lose money to undercut his competitors and put them out of business. With enough scale, a near-monopoly can provide irrational predatory pricing long enough make competitors insolvent. In between, it looks like the near monopoly is losing market share while prices drop.

Without taking the larger context, it's easy to misconstrue the long-term anti-competitive systemic effects.

(Meaning, your career doesn’t get boosted much for reviewing papers, but much more so for publishing papers)

This is an area where a confident, but wrong information is extremely costly. It’s like saying an LLM can give you high quality directions on how to tap into a high voltage transformer. Sure, but when it’s wrong, it’s very very wrong with disastrous consequences. That’s why professions like doctors and Engineers are more regulated than others.

I don’t know enough about the ethics laws to know if it was strictly illegal, but it does create a smell.

Suppose a county engineer has influence on whether oil drilling will be allowed (they don’t make policy but consult those who do), and prior to approval their relatives buy up a lot of land in the area. That engineer may not have been the deciding factor, but it seems like it runs afoul of ethics laws/standards.

Saying “revenue doesn’t equal profits” is superficially true but lacking any real substantive claim. It’s like saying “to lose weight you just need to burn more calories than you consume.” True, but a lazy attempt at a retort.

I tried to foster discussion. If profits = revenue - costs, I asked where those costs are coming from that would erode those profits. Yet again, you replied in a manner that limits discussion. Many of us come to HN because we expect higher levels of discussion than the typical Internet forum cesspool, like the guidelines lay out.

Yes, revenue provides cash flow, not profit. And costs provide the other part, as was already mentioned. But if it increases cash flow without increasing relative costs, it increases profit. Do you think banks would charge fees if they could make more money by removing them? Again, the banks are largely in control of these costs, like the amount of cash back they provide. For example, the federal reserve reports that bank fees account for 1.82% of purchase volume, while cash back programs account for 1.57% of purchase volume. In other words, they make a profit on balance.

You can read the financial statements to get more information. That's where the above numbers came from. They don't generally say "Fees contribute to X% of profits" but they do indicate they are relatively large parts of revenue. For example, JPMorgan lists $5.97B in fee revenue and rewards cost $4.28B, with the difference being profit. So where are the extra costs you are implying coming from that make fees a net cost?

I don’t disagree that western societies probably eat too much meat. But that is the trend of any burgeoning middle class, and it’s doubtful it will change.

The problem with this statement is that it implies all calories are equal in terms of nutrition. Meat is very protein dense compared to most plant foods and that can be important. That’s not to say it’s impossible to live healthily on only plants, but it’s not as simple as swapping calorie sources.

The average per capita is closer to 2,600 kcal/day. Not sure how that breaks down when normalized by the individual country population. It also doesn't include waste. In the US at least, waste is near 40%.