I think you are asserting that technological advancement represent a force that continually erodes the bar of entry (tending to increase competition as a result). If that is an accurate paraphrase of your point, I agree. My point about the new competitor raising the complexity of the system is still valid, but the upward pressure it exerts on the bar of entry is significantly countered countered by the downward pressure that technological advancement exerts.
Good point.
I feel like too much ambiguity still remains in the terms 'technological advancement' and 'complexity' at this point and they are placeholders waiting for more precise descriptions.
Your last point is an important aspect and needs to be included in any understanding of this. I suggest using the following thought experiment as a proxy for capturing the effects of 'technological advancement' on a competition system: Imagine the players in the competition system have a capability slider that can be moved from near zero to near infinite. Set to the low side, it would mean players were roughly like amoeba, primarily helpless to create or affect the majority of their environment (external control locus). Set to the high side, it would mean players are god like and their environment is helpless to resist the affects and intentions of the players (internal locus of control). It is clear that such a conceptual slider would have large effects on a competition system/market. Historically, I would say that typical people have their sliders set quite low, and companies have traditionally been many multiples higher. Looking at how competition occurs with the capability sliders set to different experimental settings seems important for gaining information about competition in general. It is almost time for me to write a program modeling this to take measurements. I haven't figured out the details of modeling the group dynamics represented by super-organisms however. I call them ubermensch and they are capable of cohesively pursuing goals as an atomic player does, but they consist of a group of players. It is hard to model ubermensch correctly in a simple fashion.
The concept of scarcity, scale and freedom take on highly specific meaning and can produce counter-intuitive implications for some capability slider settings in this thought experiment - an additional perspective to consider the problem-space from.
RE: Planned Obsolescence?