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Ban On Price Floors Abandoned, Internet Prices May Rise
paro12 and i_like_spam informed us of a 5-4 decision by the US Supreme Court which abandons a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products. The Slashdot community discussed the issue when the case was argued back in March. The ruling means that anti-competitive complaints based on price-fixing will have to be argued case-by-case and will be harder to prove. Discounts and discounters in all venues may be under pressure, with internet sales possibly the hardest hit. "Importantly, this case points a dagger at the heart of the most consumer-friendly aspects of the Internet. The Internet has shifted power to the consumer in two ways. First, it allows consumers to search for and gather information in a cost-effective, efficient manner. Second, it provides a low-cost means of retailing, making it easy for discounters to offer products to the public. This combination squeezes excess profits and inefficiencies out of product prices. Retail price maintenance seeks to short circuit this extremely consumer friendly process. By setting minimum prices, manufacturers can build in excess margins for themselves and for their favored retailers -- prices that consumers have no choice but to pay."
...all this pro-business, ultra-conservative ruling is quickly eroding the American way as we know it.
"In the interests of free speech" large companies can buy campaign ads on behalf of a candidate of their choice, and immediately after that, a boy can't hold up a sign that he thinks is humorous simply because there's a potentially underlying endorsement of illegal drug culture? "Free speech as long as it's morally approved" isn't free speech.
As if we aren't there already, but things have really gone wrong when you have to be afraid of your own thoughts. And when one group of people feel the need to control the thoughts of another group of people, guess which group of people ACTUALLY has a problem.
They still allow women to participate in elections? Jesus, if there was one challenge I would bring to the supreme court it would be allowing kitchen dwellers erode our political system with nanny state liberals. If you burn my dinner again I am going to beat you with your Wii controllers.
Signed,
The Unsufferage movement
There's always a choice to not buy. No firearms are being directed at heads.
You like to eat don't you? Want to grow all of your food?
Legalizing price fixing is the most shocking piece of US law since Congress passed the torture is AOK bill. It's going to be abused by distributors and manufacturers to screw their smaller competition and you. If you think things are consolidated today, just wait until you see the effects of industry dancing with price floors to eliminate their competition. The results are cascading and multiplicative rather than a simple sum of their parts. It is impossible to imagine any way this will actually create more competition, despite the glib logic given by Kenedy.
First retailers and you will be squeezed. By setting a price floor, distributors can charge retailers more for their goods. Retailers will have to pass the difference on to you and will also have to bear the cost of not being able to dump goods that don't sell. When a retailer makes a mistake now, they are stuck with it and can't sell the goods off at or below cost.
More risks for retailers means a smaller market overall, because they will buy less, but that's just the beginning of a new manufacturer's problems. Price floor distort prices in a way that make monopoly rents easier. Imagine you find a process to make something better than everyone else. When you start making it, the monopolist can drop the floor on your one good while raising it just a little on everything else. New entrants always have less to offer than established businesses, so they won't be able to move their pricing around as well and will be crushed.
The majority thinks the courts can weed this kind of behavior out, but what they are really saying is that they don't care about startups that can't withstand the pressure for as long as an uncertain lawsuit takes. Shame on them!
Price floors create nothing but friction and economic friction is always harmful.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There have been studies done on this question which demonstrate conclusively that the so-called "liberal" justices have voted as a bloc more often than the so-called "conservative" justices for about the last 25 years. But, as a previous poster said, don't let reality intrude on your fantasies.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Yeah we learned the lesson of judicial activism from you libbies. And WE are much better at controlling such processes. YOU are fucked. Have a great day.
Correction: We are ALL fucked*. You right-wingers just are too blinded by your prioritization of non-issues such as the Gay Marriage boogie man and Flag Burning. You vote against your own self-interest economically and even socially. I like the way the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas" put it: It is like the French Revolution in reverse: The poor and disenfranchised rally with their torches and pitchforks to the gates of the aristocracy yelling "We're here to cut your taxes!" Since 2000, you folks ran the government, lock, stock, and barrel. We have seen the results of right-wing government: an abysmal failure by almost any measure. This is patently obvious to all but a few "dead-enders." We are all fucked. This "booming" economy is subverting the middle class, the war in Iraq is draining our blood and treasure at an alarming rate and has become a terrorist training ground, the national debt continues to grow seemingly without bound (especially if calculated using standard corporate accounting measures), the dollar is dropping in value, and America has lost her moral compass, and with it, the respect of the entire world, when we started torturing, violating international agreements, and threw the Geneva Convention and Habeus in the trashcan.
Now the SCOTUS has:
1) Essentially gutted Brown (racists everywhere rejoice!), but affirmative action for the rich is still ok. It is just called "legacy admission." Our "president" benefited greatly from this, since he is like King Midas, except everything he touches turns to shit instead of gold. Such a person would never get into Yale or Harvard based on merit (or lack thereof) without this sort of institution.
2) Put a huge dent in the 1st amendment by actually considering the content of the speech, which is to say that Chief Justice Roberts is now the moral arbiter of what is and is not protected speech, and "Drugs Are Bad" is the only legal message for high school students on this particular subject. This is a slippery slope. For example: Can Mormons, who consider caffeine a drug, start banning Starbuck's t-shirts in school?
3) Banned a sometimes medically necessary abortion procedure where Justice Anthony Kennedy emphasized in his majority opinion "the bond of love" a mother has for a child and said some women come to regret an abortion, implying that women just cannot be trusted with any serious choices concerning family planning. This is a particularly troublesome ruling no matter what side of the abortion fence you are on. I would not want to go down the dark road of bans to avoid regret later in life.
And by the way, aren't you conservatives supposed to be the "moral" ones? If judicial activism is bad, then I am surprised to hear that you've not learned that two wrongs do not make a right. It is almost like all you guys skipped kindergarten where this sort of thing is taught...
*unless you are part of the aristocracy.