U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
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U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
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Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#2I have mixed feelings about this. Apple certainly brought competition to the market. Amazon was reputedly leveraging it's other profits to sell books at a loss in an attempt to corner the market. Seems pretty anti-competitive to me.
However Apple's "most favored nation" clause is something I find extremely distasteful. That seems to me to be a hinderance to the whole concept of free markets.
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#3I understand that industry collusion in necessity goods (food/gas/medicine) is bad for the consumer but why can't book publishers and wholesalers act together to raise the price of books 100x if they so wish? Let the market decide if that is a good decision or not. In fact, if they raise prices on certain category of books (e.g. educational books), it will only hurt them because it will encourage students to buy used older versions from secondary market, regardless of what version is supposed to be used in class.
Also, why are e-books any different from paper books? Let them price them however they want. If Hollywood and theaters want to sell movie tickets at $50/person, why shouldn't they be allowed to?
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#4Given the wide availability of pirate books, publishers may be shooting themselves in the foot by making their titles overly expensive.
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#5First paragraph: "... according to people familiar with the matter"
Good thing they didn't report what people unfamiliar with the matter said.
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#6"Apple warns US on poor financial management"
How exactly does the US government have the moral authority to warn anyone of anything, considering it is bankrupt?
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#7I understand that industry collusion in necessity goods (food/gas/medicine) is bad for the consumer but why can't book publishers and wholesalers act together to raise the price of books 100x if they so wish? Let the market decide if that is a good decision or not. In fact, if they raise prices on certain category of books (e.g. educational books), it will only hurt them because it will encourage students to buy used…
Necessity vs. non-essential is quite a slippery slope as there is a gradient of need. How would one draw the line?
As Enron and countless other examples show, a purely free market does not always result in an optimum outcome, even for something as perfectly fungible.
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#8I understand that industry collusion in necessity goods (food/gas/medicine) is bad for the consumer but why can't book publishers and wholesalers act together to raise the price of books 100x if they so wish? Let the market decide if that is a good decision or not. In fact, if they raise prices on certain category of books (e.g. educational books), it will only hurt them because it will encourage students to buy used…
Necessity vs. non-essential is quite a slippery slope as there is a gradient of need. How would one draw the line? As Enron and countless other examples show, a purely free market does not always result in an optimum outcome, even for something as perfectly fungible.
Enron wasn't operating in a perfectly free market. The electric power business in California is heavily regulated, in particular, the utilities were forced by law to pay whatever Enron demanded, and also by law were unable to pass those costs along to the ratepayers.
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#9I understand that industry collusion in necessity goods (food/gas/medicine) is bad for the consumer but why can't book publishers and wholesalers act together to raise the price of books 100x if they so wish? Let the market decide if that is a good decision or not. In fact, if they raise prices on certain category of books (e.g. educational books), it will only hurt them because it will encourage students to buy used…
The problem is that that's not actually how it works. For things like textbooks, people don't really have a choice on whether or not to buy it - when everyone colludes to price it very high, the people who need them have no recourse other than to buy them.
You nonchalantly say that students can just buy older versions, but that is often impossible. Homework problems are regularly taken from the textbook, and those problems are regularly changed from version to version. Additionally, when publishing companies are coming out with a new version every couple years, there's not a lot of availability for used books either.
Re: U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers on E-Book Pricing
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Necessity vs. non-essential is quite a slippery slope as there is a gradient of need. How would one draw the line? As Enron and countless other examples show, a purely free market does not always result in an optimum outcome, even for something as perfectly fungible.
Enron wasn't operating in a perfectly free market. The electric power business in California is heavily regulated, in particular, the utilities were forced by law to pay whatever Enron demanded, and also by law were unable to pass those costs along to the ratepayers.
Generally Enron is described as an example of deregulation gone wrong as Enron was able to control supply. That has nothing to do with passing off costs to ratepayers.
Even if that's not a perfect example, do we really disagree that a pure free market doesn't always lead to the optimum outcome?
Also, I don't think its civil to downvote simply b/c you disagree.