So I was in the shaving aisle of the drugstore yesterday, thinking that it would be interesting to write a book about when capitalism doesn’t work. Why? Because two companies, Gillette and Schick, have basically divided up the men’s shaving market, offering largely comparable products at inflated prices—in New York, a single Gillette razor blade now costs about $5. A Gillette blade really lasts less than a week, so you’re talking close to $300 a year on blades alone. Absurd. The blades are so expensive that drug stores now shelve them behind the cash registers, where you can’t even examine the prices; I guess they must be heavily shoplifted items.

And the disposable razors Gillette and Schick make are all pretty crummy (not to mention environmentally unfortunate); I’m convinced they deliberately make lousy ones so that people will choose instead to buy the razors with high-margin replacement blades.

My hunch is that there are no real competitors to these two companies because the barriers to entry are so high; almost everyone buys razors from a handful of chain drug stores in the United States, and it would probably cost tens of millions of dollars to develop a product and get those stores to carry it—if indeed they aren’t pressured or bribed by Gillette and Schick not to, which they probably are.

But perhaps my faith in capitalism has been restored; I was delighted to read in the Wall Street Journal about an Internet-based firm called the Dollar Shave Club, which for a buck a month will send you a razor and four blades. For $6 or $9 a month, a better razor and blades.

I love this idea….and this isn’t a paid endorsement or anything, although I would happily do so if asked…