[Skoob]

Pick a sector nowadays, any major sector, and what do you see? A cartel: an industrial complex. And what happens when industry forms a cartel? More and more money goes toward sustaining the cartel, and less and less goes toward the market that the cartel was supposed to serve, and what does get produced is of poorer and poorer quality, because in typical organizational-behaviour fashion, the priority shifts from developing a really good product to other objectives like steady cash flow and putting money into insider pockets. It's endemic during this period of political and socioeconomic decline, and going to get a lot worse as many smaller operators dry up and blow away. I don't post these comments here lightly: take a look at every single measure used to gauge the health of retail, and the picture is terrible.

If things get bad enough, mergers and acquisitions are inevitable, if for no other reason than survival. I hope it doesn't get that bad. Regardless, we should support the upscale collector niche as much as we can.