Craft guilds were in fact set up to limit competition. Seriously.
Every history book attests to it. Pretty intolerant, too. They raised worker mobs when tbey felt they needed it.
As for human nature, well, Hobbs didn't make his theories out of hand waving.
He spoke of what he saw and what he saw wasn't pretty.
And for human restraint and riots, check the news; they're yearly events somewhere. Although soccer riots haven't been in the news lately. But neither is soccer.
If you live in an enlightened commuity where all is cooperation, protecting the commons, and self-restraint, kudos.
But it sounds more like Shangri-la than Earth, where competition is the norm. Survival of the fittest.
And the commerce world has long been cutthroat, as your guilds proved. Literary in olden times.
But all that is history and in these post-modernist times, history is whatever fits the political narrative of the moment.
Biology is a different critter, though. Here's one example of a truly comletitive species, for the fun of it:
https://www.visionlearning.com/blog/...olution-greed/
Because, like it or not, competition is a real life necessity. Especially in commerce where you either compete all out or you fail. Socilalized restraint may be good and dandy in theory and academic "should be's" but the world of what is is about comoetition, not about offending sensibilities.
Nook came out of the gate determined to fight Kindle all the way but then they just...stopped. They had a quarter of the market and !indle was down to 56%. They had the brand, customer loyalty, and momentum. And tbdy stopped competing. Why? Only Riggio knows for sure but tbat sas at tbe same time they were caught downlisting Indie romance books, purposefully hiding them and limiting their exposure at the time. They stopped actively trying to give consumers, what they wanted. Yeah, they still trotted out new Nooks once in a while. Put them in a kiosk that slowly got moved out of the way in stores, stopped supporting desired features. Nooks were like the "special order" books.
Sort-of a "If you really, really, really want it, we'll sell it to you. But wouldn't you rather have this nice front table book?" kind of thing.
They stopped trying to sell ebooks and consumers noticed.
So consumers went elsewhere to get their needs and wants met.
Because that is what commerce is about; giving consumers what they want as long and as well as you can.
Commerce isn't some polite 19th century gentlemen's club where each member is guaranteed their "fair share" of sales without much exertion and is guaranteed a profit no matter what. That is in fact, guild-think.
But that went away with 19th century laissez faire and the great robber barons.
Teddy Roosevelt and the trustbusters did away with that retrograde thinking.
Consumers always had the money and today antitrust makes sure they have the power to choose. It is producers that have to compete for consumer money. Consumers have the power now, not trusts, not producers, not guilds; they're in control.
It wasn't that long ago that B&M was the big dog, telling publishers what kinds of covers they wanted on the books they were willing to stock on tbeir precious shelf space. When tbey announced tbey were going to set up a website, all the pundits wrote epitaphs for Amazon because they were going to get steamrolled by B&N deep pockets.
Turned out differently, didn't it?
Because B&N.com turned out to be a half-baked, half-hearted effort.
(Borders didn't even bother to build a site. They contracted with Amazon to fullfill any online orders that "might come buy". Because online was a fad, apparently.)
And Nook sent the same way.
They got to 25% and decided it was enough. No need to do much more to promote ebooks. Maybe tbey tbought somebody wouldn't like it?
They mailed it in, after that. Lost sight of tbe market, lost control of tbeir stock.
Death spiral ongoing.
Half-hearted competition gets you dead and buried. Or, buried and nearly dead, like Nook.
If Amazon has a commanding share of ebook sales in tbe US and UK it is beause they've never stopped competing, never stopped looking for new ways to bring reads to consumers. And making a buck or two along the way.
They played the commerce game the real world darwinian way, competing, not the theoretical, "leave something for the suckers", "enlightened" way. (Which is ilegal collusion, BTW.)
As a result, ebook history will be written by them.
At least until they get fat, dumb and lazy. Not yet, though.