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Cute Russian comic. The home of the official English version is here if anyone wants to skip ahead (or support them): https://boosty.to/gabiconomics-en
Lobbying is the act of influencing government officials or lawmakers to support decisions that benefit a particular group or interest. It often involves advocacy, negotiations, and strategic communication to shape policies or regulations in a favorable way.
Ok, clearly bad for customers who want cheaper wheels, but how does this benefit the chief? I’m sure we’ll learn soon enough, but it seems like it’d mostly push customers towards recognizing the benefit of more expensive & more durable wheels that also don’t have added taxes?
Creates a larger barrier to entry for smaller wheel makers and pushes the ones who are on the edge out of the market. It increases his marketshare since he lost some to gabby
Gabi already has made it past that barrier, even if not by much, and he hasn’t made it to a point of actually producing rimmed wheels yet. As a long-term strategy it works, but I assume he’s looking at some more immediate gain.
i don’t mean push gabi out i mean accept that he can dominate the ‘cheaper wheels’ share of the market rather than try to catch up
But how does adding taxes to (only to) cheaper wheels help with that? He’s saying it’ll put more money in the pockets of bureaucrats, but how do higher prices due to taxes on cheap wheels help him?
Well he’s been making loads of money speculating with a high price but then he ran out of people willing to pay that price. Rather than lower the price he’s eliminating the old wheels as competitor so that everyone has to buy new wheels, at his price of course.
In the same ways that per-season shoes still exist, it doesn’t seem like taxes would entirely remove the market for lower quality wheels, just decrease their attractiveness to customers. So far, he doesn’t yet have people actually making higher quality wheels though, he’s dominating the market only through buying out their wheels.
I’m sure he could start making them now, but jumping to squeezing out lower quality wheels doesn’t solve the problem of other customers not being in a position to afford longer lasting ones.
They can afford it, owners of carts are all gonna be businesses. They’re just sticking to their existing ones for economic reasons or because they don’t even know about the other wheels yet.
If they can afford better wheels, I still don’t get how it benefits him to eliminate or squeeze the market for the wheels he’s actually making today, but I’m sure he’s thought through this more than I have.
He doesn’t care, he’s making more on this as a speculator. The old wheel game is dead and he can switch to this in less time than it took them to start.
Not to mention that ultimately if you force the entire market onto metal wheels they’re going to do it no matter what. They’re businesses that need their carts. The entire market will switch because they have to.
Maybe wheels are just so crucial to the people that need them that a higher quality item is always the right choice, but I’ve certainly chosen cheaper items previously knowing that if I manage to break it through my lower-level usage, the higher quality item would have been a smarter choice. It’s hard to imagine that higher quality wheels truly eliminate the demand for a cheaper but less durable solution.
Businesses don’t work that way. The whole reason SaaS and cloud computing exploded is because businesses would rather pay a premium now to not own liability later. It’s why business warranties and service level agreements and all that shit exist in the first place.
Costs are also amortized. If a wheel costs 20 coins and must be replaced every year, and a banded wheel costs 80 coins but lasts six years, then it makes more sense to buy the banded wheel. Similarly, a wheel failing means you lose the revenue the cart would earn you until you replace it, so a wheel that fails less often improves your expected profit.
Not that every business acts that way. Sometimes budget might limit options, sometimes decision-makers may decide the risk is worth it for the savings (they only drive on paved roads or some other particular set of conditions improve the calculus). Some business owners (many!) are irrational or stupid.
You’re not thinking shady enough to keep up with Chief
I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose.
Like, is the tax not going to cover wheels with paper rims, or something? That still doesn’t really materially change things for him.
Can you fake a metal rim? Seems like that’d be pretty obvious.
spoiler
It would be pretty obvious, if the person inspecting the wheels weren’t a personal friend of Chief’s
No spoilers!!Oh, wait, spoiler tag
