INDUSTRY STRUCTURE AND INCOME OPPORTUNITIES 157
As we shall see, this framework also enables us to identify which types ofbusiness offered exceptional returns to their owners and which offered only
subsistence-level income but could serve as a way of making ends meet for
citizens with other obligations or of occupying slaves in the intervals between
other duties. The specific examples that follow are based on a review of liter-
ary, epigraphic and archaeological sources. They are presented in the hope that
experts in the relevant products will be able to fill out or modify the picture
presented based on current knowledge or new discoveries.
To illustrate the economics of growth in a competitive market, let us takethe example of an industry with no barriers to entry or basis for advan-
tage: undecorated ceramics used for family cooking and eating – bowls, plates,
and so on. These are simple items and archaeological finds show they were not
always especially well made.^48 Every pottery workshop’s input costs are the
same, consisting of fuel, clay and slave labour, and once half a dozen slaves have
been divided among five main tasks, one’s pottery workshop is as efficient as
it will get.^49 There are no assets to speak of; even the furnace is rebuilt after
one or two firings. While decorated products can be differentiated so that the
better painters and makers of complex vessel shapes are in high demand and
their works can command better prices, any potter will admit that basic crock-
ery for the kitchen and family meals will look and perform much the same
whoever makes it. Prices will tend to settle at the lowest level compatible with
subsistence for the household of an efficient pottery workshop owner. If they
rise above this and it becomes possible to make more than subsistence money
through making coarse ware, other people will enter the business and, to sell
their output, must drive prices down. As everyone’s costs are the same, no one
Barriers to EntryHighHighLowPotential for
DifferentiationStalemateOligopolyFragmentedNiche BusinessesLow