Okay. I didn't intend for the "runaway train" concept to include a fiery crash. Just the opposite. It's going to behave in a way to ensure perpetual forward movement.......they can't stop fuelling the train with coal, they can't fuel it with less coal, etc.
Or maybe it's a trapeez artist on a tight rope that can never stop walking on the tight rope.
Yeah, if a company stops performing, they stop being a company. See the points above us, talking about the companies that "used to be" in the DJIA.
The moment you stop satisfying customers, somebody else will.
Just like you have to keep breathing. You can't stop. You can't breathe less. You have to perpetually keep breathing. I'm not going to criticize you for your need to perpetually breathe.
Coca-Cola knows soda isn't a forever thing. So what do they do? Diversify into other drink options while buying up the good ones and bullying the smaller good ones so they can't get any shelf space in stores.
They adapt. They also introduce new soda products like Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. They realize that consumer tastes change, and they can't just keep shoveling the old product down our throats. Or we'll stop buying and then they go away.
Remember that the way that all of these companies got to be the size they are? By creating a product that people will willingly buy from them. It's a bilateral transaction. Supply AND demand.
Take out more "coercive" markets like health care (pay up or die) or gasoline (pay up or you can't go to work and you make no money and starve). This is a consumer product. Coca-Cola exists because they've spent over a century offering products that customers WANT to buy. They're not some rapacious robber baron exploiting a monopoly supplying a critically necessary good. It's freakin' soda.
This is the free market. Adapt or die. And that's exactly as it should be. If you can't satisfy customers better than others, you shouldn't survive.
