I used to think this. I mean if you have 3 main competitors and one of them does something controversial, like raising prices or adding subscriptions, it’s a great cover so the anger isn’t all on you. It doesn’t take a genius to keep eyes on your industry, especially when it’s usually an oligopoly
Plus, these guys have each other’s numbers, they meet up at events… It’s not crazy for them to exchange ideas, especially because billionaires exist to one up each other, money has no other meaning at that point
But a lot of these things hurt the companies, and they come out fast - faster than most companies can move
Then I stumbled upon McKinsey. Consulting companies that advise entire industries, governments, and most importantly investors. Theoretically they “firewall” conflicts of interest to avoid collusion, except they seem to act in coordination an awful lot
And the investors matter because they advise them where to invest, meaning ignoring their ass backwards advice has consequences
Some of their top hits - Enron, the 2008 financial crisis, the opioid crisis, using mass layoffs as a way to bump up stock price, green washing fraud, return to office, and a lot more. That section on their Wikipedia is a long read
What we know, we mostly know because it was exposed in open court because they got caught… No one knows their client list or the full scale of what they’ve done (though they’ve been implicated and fined for quite a lot of fraud, among other crimes)
I used to think this. I mean if you have 3 main competitors and one of them does something controversial, like raising prices or adding subscriptions, it’s a great cover so the anger isn’t all on you. It doesn’t take a genius to keep eyes on your industry, especially when it’s usually an oligopoly
Plus, these guys have each other’s numbers, they meet up at events… It’s not crazy for them to exchange ideas, especially because billionaires exist to one up each other, money has no other meaning at that point
But a lot of these things hurt the companies, and they come out fast - faster than most companies can move
Then I stumbled upon McKinsey. Consulting companies that advise entire industries, governments, and most importantly investors. Theoretically they “firewall” conflicts of interest to avoid collusion, except they seem to act in coordination an awful lot
And the investors matter because they advise them where to invest, meaning ignoring their ass backwards advice has consequences
Some of their top hits - Enron, the 2008 financial crisis, the opioid crisis, using mass layoffs as a way to bump up stock price, green washing fraud, return to office, and a lot more. That section on their Wikipedia is a long read
What we know, we mostly know because it was exposed in open court because they got caught… No one knows their client list or the full scale of what they’ve done (though they’ve been implicated and fined for quite a lot of fraud, among other crimes)
It’s a seemingly endless rabbit hole