It can be expected that when Internet giants crush small manufacturers with orders of magnitude subsidies to establish a monopoly advantage, the story of taxi software and takeaway software may repeat itself.

The subsidies sent to us will eventually be earned back from us in the form of platform fees in the future.

However, is it really that simple to earn a little platform fee?

Just like the strength of the takeaway platform and the merchants, the taxi platform is strong for drivers.

If fresh e-commerce forms a monopoly, in what form will it squeeze the upstream and downstream?

In 2005, Oxfam investigated the coffee industry chain in Britain and revealed a cruel rule system.

A kilogram of coffee costs 29 cents, but farmers in Uganda can only get the purchase price of 14 cents.

Buyers only accept this price, and coffee farmers either sell at a loss or get nothing.

Did the buyer make money?

No, they received coffee beans and sold them to the processing factory at the price of 19 cents, which is almost unprofitable.

Did the processing plant make money?

No, the processed coffee was shipped to Uganda's capital and sold to vendors for only 26 cents. There is no oil and water.

Strangely, traders also have no money. They are responsible for sorting and exporting, and earn only 1 cent per kilogram of coffee beans.

Who made all the money?

World-renowned consumer goods company.

The purchase cost of coffee in their London roasting factory is $65,438 +0.64 per kilogram. After grinding and baking, the price rose to $26.4 per kilogram.

Processing one kilogram of coffee, the company's income is $24.76.

Can it sell a little profit, make the purchase price of coffee rise to 29 cents, and at least keep farmers in Uganda from starving?

Easy, but impossible.

This is monopoly capital, and all monopoly capitals do this.

They will only use their monopoly position in the industrial chain to squeeze the upstream and downstream as much as possible and crush all the rebels with the capital of the order of magnitude.

Before doing futures, my understanding of the industrial chain was superficial.

I once naively thought that supply and demand determine prices, and factors such as production, consumption and inventory determine supply and demand.

But now I tend to think that the right to speak determines the market.

Whoever has the absolute right to speak in the whole process will control the inventory, supply and demand, price and profit.

Speculative capital in the northeast soybean producing areas crazy sweeping goods, as much as possible collection. Billions of money are hoarding beans, and the price of beans is soaring. However, the oil mill in Shandong stopped working because it could not buy beans.

This is the right to speak.

The price of glass soared to the highest level in history, and the production capacity exceeded that of previous years. The market is in short supply. However, soda ash enterprises, the main raw material, are facing slow sales and backlog.

This is the right to speak.

The industrial chain is like an hourglass. The narrowest part in the middle has the greatest right to speak and has mastered the distribution right of upstream and downstream interests.

How to become the narrowest part of the hourglass?

Less people and more money.

The giants in the field of selling vegetables, what they are doing is simple.

Kill all other players and become the richest one.

Before the emergence of vegetable giants, was there a giant monopoly in the field of vegetable sales?

In the era of supermarket, monopoly exists. It is just not obvious in our country.

In Africa, this monopoly even triggered protests from local farmers, who wanted to burn down supermarkets.

Because supermarkets bring a lot of cheap vegetables, fruits and food from other places, local agricultural producers are squeezed and forced to grow other cheaper things.

In Europe and America, this monopoly is also very mature.

For example, in Britain, on the one hand, every city has a large-scale Tesco, and every block has a Tesco express similar to a convenience store.

Brand chain stores selling cheap and fresh products abound. Small vendors can only transform into high-quality products, concentrated in the central business district of the city, adjacent to large supermarkets, focusing on local production and choosing differentiated products first.

Where I am in charge, you can only produce what I specify.

Otherwise, there is no land to sell, or it cannot be sold.

In developed countries, this monopoly is possible. After all, the agricultural population is small and the per capita land area is large.

In developing countries with dense agricultural population, this monopoly eventually destroyed the livelihood of a large number of people in many areas and shaped the tragedy of Ugandan coffee farmers.

This kind of destruction is not to replace the employment of vegetable vendors and create the employment of distributors, but the kind of destruction that the cheap products produced by mechanization in the United States destroy the small-scale peasant economy in Asia.

Once there are only one or two platforms for selling vegetables online, the speed and depth of this monopoly will be extreme.

Maximizing platform revenue, this principle will squeeze every individual in the industrial chain one day.

I am also a deep user of the vegetable selling platform myself.

Just last week, the subsidized price of 0.33 yuan a catty of sweet corn made me feel that I was in two time and space with 1.25 yuan a catty of yellow corn for feed.

1.A kilo of red-shelled eggs in 5 yuan makes me feel that the futures price of1.A kilo of 85 yuan seems not too low.

Cheap enough to be delivered to your door.

I know the risks of this monopoly, but as a consumer, I still vote with my feet.

Terrible capital, fragile humanity.