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This is properly analogous to you paying the manufacturer for your car to be produced, and then having the manufacturer give it a car dealer who you now have to pay an additional fee to if you want the car you've already paid for.

Which is exactly the case. Most US states enforce franchise laws, making direct sales of cars illegal. If you want to buy a car, the government makes you pay, effectively, an additional ~$1,500 fee to the dealer.

http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/internetautosales.pdf

The detailed studies of the impact of restrictive franchise laws done before the Internet
dramatically increased potential efficiency gains from a more streamlined distribution system
found potential savings of at least 6 percent per vehicle. At today’s prices and volumes the
potential savings are on the order $1,500 per vehicle, or more than $20 billion per year.

When it comes to propping up your business model with government regulation, the publishers have nothing on car dealerships.

MS-Office and MS-Windows are marked up about 5-6 times what would be normal for other products. Although everything else is losing scads of money, MS-Office and MS-Windows pull in 79% and 86% profit margins. In other words, the monopoly rents cost consumers billions -- a big drain on the economy even ignoring broken patches, interoperability and security problems.

If you start looking at value, the markup for Windows and Office is much higher since their offerings are of lesser quality and more effort that comparable tools from other sources. Even when I worked for a dept with deep pockets, I simply got tired of MS stuff not working. MS Products simply are not ready for the Internet. So I upgraded to some different GNU/Linux distros, which despite the FUD and spin are easier to install and maintain than any of the Windows flavors I had to deal with. Though, lately, I've started using OS X, which is even easier.

Go here and type "software" into the search box in the upper right.

CFA

As to the benefit of local judges, you may want to think again. A local judge in the Bronx recently presided over a lawsuit in which a local jury awarded $51 million to Darryl Barnes, who was paralyzed when he drew a TEC-9 on a police officer who fired first. Bronx voters favor judges who dispense Robin Hood justice.

Similarly, local courts have made Mississippi and many other southern states "judicial hellholes" for product liability litigation according to the American Tort Reform Association. The problem here is that the voters in the court's jurisdiction tend to identify with the plaintiff. The corporations sued generally have their factories elsewhere, so it doesn't affect the local voters if jobs dry up. On the other hand, a large award can bring a lot of money to a small county. It is this abuse of discretion by local judges and juries that makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce call for moving litigation out of local courts and into federal courts while consumer rights groups want to keep litigation in local courts.

As to your comment, "If someone has really done something so wrong that they deserve to pay out 30 billion dollars in punative damages then they should go to jail instead," I would only direct your attention to O.J. Simpson. O.J. did not go to jail (again, your beloved local justice did a fine job with him, as it did with the murderers of Emmett Till) and punitive damages were the most justice he received.

At the same time, the number of liability suits ending in bizarre awards is much smaller than most people think. Just as the press tend to exaggerate spectacular events, such as civilian casualties in Iraq, and make them seem more common than they are, they also exaggerate the frequency of liability blunders (absurd verdicts, excessive awards, etc.) and do not follow up six months later when absurd awards are thrown out on appeal.

Here are some facts, courtesy of the Center for Justice and Democracy and Public Citizen:

• 0.02% of all civil cases handled by the state courts concern product liability.
• The defendants win more than half of these cases.
• When plaintiffs do win product liability cases, more than half the awards are less than $27,000.
• Awards over $1 million are most common when the plaintiff has suffered grievous injury (paralysis, brain damage, amputation) and over half of these large awards are either reversed or reduced substantially by the trial judge or on appeal.
• Only a small fraction of a percent of all findings for the plaintiff award punitive damages. Between 1965 and 1994, there were 379 punitive damage awards in the U.S. in product liability lawsuits. Half of these awards were less than $50,000.
• According to the Consumer Federation of America, liability suits add about 0.26% to the cost of consumer goods. This number is similar to what the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found.

As to the benefit of local judges, you may want to think again. A local judge in the Bronx recently presided over a lawsuit in which a local jury awarded $51 million to Darryl Barnes, who was paralyzed when he drew a TEC-9 on a police officer who fired first. Bronx voters favor judges who dispense Robin Hood justice.

Similarly, local courts have made Mississippi and many other southern states "judicial hellholes" for product liability litigation according to the American Tort Reform Association. The problem here is that the voters in the court's jurisdiction tend to identify with the plaintiff. The corporations sued generally have their factories elsewhere, so it doesn't affect the local voters if jobs dry up. On the other hand, a large award can bring a lot of money to a small county. It is this abuse of discretion by local judges and juries that makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce call for moving litigation out of local courts and into federal courts while consumer rights groups want to keep litigation in local courts.

As to your comment, "If someone has really done something so wrong that they deserve to pay out 30 billion dollars in punative damages then they should go to jail instead," I would only direct your attention to O.J. Simpson. O.J. did not go to jail (again, your beloved local justice did a fine job with him, as it did with the murderers of Emmett Till) and punitive damages were the most justice he received.

At the same time, the number of liability suits ending in bizarre awards is much smaller than most people think. Just as the press tend to exaggerate spectacular events, such as civilian casualties in Iraq, and make them seem more common than they are, they also exaggerate the frequency of liability blunders (absurd verdicts, excessive awards, etc.) and do not follow up six months later when absurd awards are thrown out on appeal.

Here are some facts, courtesy of the Center for Justice and Democracy and Public Citizen:

• 0.02% of all civil cases handled by the state courts concern product liability.
• The defendants win more than half of these cases.
• When plaintiffs do win product liability cases, more than half the awards are less than $27,000.
• Awards over $1 million are most common when the plaintiff has suffered grievous injury (paralysis, brain damage, amputation) and over half of these large awards are either reversed or reduced substantially by the trial judge or on appeal.
• Only a small fraction of a percent of all findings for the plaintiff award punitive damages. Between 1965 and 1994, there were 379 punitive damage awards in the U.S. in product liability lawsuits. Half of these awards were less than $50,000.
• According to the Consumer Federation of America, liability suits add about 0.26% to the cost of consumer goods. This number is similar to what the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found.

The price for XP in a competitive market would be around $20.

What you call an honest living, a federal judge and a federal appeals court called criminal activity.

The price for XP in a competitive market would be around $20.

What you call an honest living, a federal judge and a federal appeals court called criminal activity.

Hopefully the consumer watchdog groups around will pick up on this. Groups like Consumer Federation of America and Consumer's Union (publisher of Consumer Reports do some good work. They are a little slow and behind the times in some ways but they are some of the few groups that confront the cable industry, mostly over the issue of rates. They've been involved in the open access issue which has been important.

You could also organize your community to be your own consumer advocates, rather than hope these organizations will do it for you. Since its an Internet related issue you'll have a much easier time organizing because the people you want to reach are mainly online. Get in touch with the public utility commission, city council, the local news media and the cable company itself. Usually these people here nothing at all from the public on issues like this, if they get 10 calls they'll piss in their pants. Mail the local Linux Users Group, Internet Society Chapter, and other computer related fora and suggest people do the same.

The "incredible" 90%+ figure is in fact incredible. I've seen this particular piece of misdirection ove and over, where "media" is redefined as "mass media", and then "mass media" is redefined as "national TV".

I'll have to dig out my copy of The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian but I recall "the media" being defined rather broadly to include books, magazines, newspapers, a/v recordings as well as broadcast.

Note, by the way, that my argument is not that there is *not* corporate news. Note that my argument is not even that the Bix 6 are a result of contraction. My argument is simply that expansion of media is outstripping the contraction.

Interesting, thanks for clarifying that. Certainly it can be agreed that since the 70's technology has expanded the amount and range of media experiences available to the individual consumer. Your phrasing of this reminds me of a speech by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America at a conference (sorry doesn't have his speech), in which he talked about how at the same time that we are seeing technology expanding media potential (and thus the potential of civil society) we are seeing a retreat (or contraction) caused by coporatization of this media. This seems to be very similar to what you just stated, since you acknowledge that coporatization is a countervailing force. Dr. Cooper however saw a potential for the concentration of media in fewer and fewer hands to ultimately reverse the gains the technology has made.

McChesney in particular is pessimistic about the Web's potential to correct the media's current defects. He believes that we're in a brief window of openess that will close once the major media oligopies get their act together and team up with the communications infrastructure providers to turn the Web into a hypercommercialized interactive TV system. From this interview I gather that you don't think consumers will accept that. Consumer spending power works well in competitive markets not so well otherwise. Given the concerns about media concentration I've raised do you think consumer power will ultimately be sufficient? What are your views on the potential for antitrust action in the media industry?

Do you think that this is an accurate characterization of their arguements and your position? I would be very interested in hearing you respond at more length and detail to their arguements, as I found your interview to be quite insightful.

Oh, I posted part of the interview to www.indymedia.org there was some discussion, not too insightful but I thought you might be interested.