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I've noticed my local hobby shop with more trains as usual as well, I was thinking it was the summer ru***ho so I don't know, maybe they're getting prepared for Xmas a tad bit earlier this year. also "2 or 3 megacompanies controlling the market" is called an oligopoly(sp?) anyway sometimes it's a good thing( Compaq, Dell ect.) they compete with each other and since they basically have the same *** product the only place they can win customers is price and/or support so now you can get a 400$ with a 2 year warranty or even turn it in +$ in 3 years for a new computer. a bad oligopoly or in some cases monopoly would be power companies, and that's why they're controlled by the government. Now we go to the threats of an oligopoly: in an unregulater market(laiessez-faire) which means "hand's off" an oligopoly can very quickly become a monopoly because one company may develop something that blows their competition out of the water, and buy that company out( we've almost seen this in the video card industry a couple of times). A oligopoly is also much harder to enter into so it lowers the number of firms willing to enter a market(so no more, or very few new producers will come into the market) anywho common oligopolies would be cell phone companies, computer companies and "big-box stores"(like walmart). there is a short term benefit to the consumer in an oligopoly as the megacompanies try to compete with each other, but once they each have a big enough market share competition will cease and we'll all lose. to go back to a point we do not live in an unregulated market so the goverment would stop a monopoly from happening. Also, an Oligopoly does NOT mean there are only 2 or 4 or 5 companies in the market, it only means that 5 or less companies control the market and dictate what direction that market will go in. so basically what I'm saying is in the next couple of years you'll see an increase in quality and a lowering of price of products but it will not last long and the crap will hit the fan if this market truly becomes an oligopoly. Under our current market structure Oligopolies are completely legal and even embraced( people have this funny way of not looking at the longterm).
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