Wuhan's crayfish vendors now offer on-site processing
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Wuhan’s crayfish market has started offering processing services. After you buy your crayfish, there’s a free wash-and-prep station right next to the stall, staffed by three people working in tandem.
The first vendors to roll out this perk gain an immediate advantage: more customers. It’s a textbook example of the “something nobody else offers” type of premium service.
The barrier to entry, however, is low—any vendor can hire three people tomorrow—and the cost is high: three full-time laborers dedicated solely to prep. If the player can’t seize enough market share, the service will eventually cost more than it brings in.
For anyone selling crayfish all summer, the day inevitably comes when this service becomes a pure loss generator. Yet they can’t cancel it, because it’s become their main selling point. Customers are now accustomed to it; the moment you take it away, they’ll shop elsewhere. You can choose never to offer free processing in the first place, but once you do, clawing it back is almost impossible.
Some entrepreneurs swear by the “give a little extra” philosophy. Consumers naturally prefer a vendor who is more generous over one who is stingy. But the invisible price is higher operating costs, pushing everyone into low-value, low-throat-clearing competition until no one profits and the whole sector wilts. That raises an unsettling question: do certain industries decline because service is too bad—or because service is too good?
Large corporations engage in similar money-losing spectacle-making, with the end goal of monopoly. Once there’s only one ride-hailing platform or one group-buying behemoth left, the harvest begins. Yet we notice they are in no rush to cash in. Instead, they use algorithms to skim selectively. They reap supernormal profits from their pricing power while simultaneously subsidizing new product lines to undercut any newcomer and fend off every potential competitor. These firms already constitute de facto monopolies—whether they decide to “cut the leeks” is merely a scheduling matter.
At work we meet plenty of “grind-kings.” It’s hard to say whether they create more value, but they can demonstrably stay at their desks thirty minutes longer than anyone else. Once two grind-kings lock horns, their escalating “give a little extra” soon blankets the entire office in its shadow. By peddling low-quality toil, they squeeze out those who simply do an honest day’s work. They’re not competing on innovation or output; they’re competing on sheer doggedness, and inexplicably that wins the boss’s favor—a textbook case of unhealthy ruinous competition.
Back to the crayfish market: someone can monopolize pricing and name their own numbers, someone else can monopolize supply and cater exclusively to the high end. So tell me—who can monopolize the act of laboring itself so thoroughly that others volunteer to labor for them?