This is exactly what markets exist for. If the price creeps up, customers who aren't willing to buy at the higher level will go elsewhere, or stay out of the market. In the ultimate case, you charge every customer exactly what they are willing to pay, as long as that price is above the cost of producing the good. Remember, the whole reason Amazon is still in existance is because they are cheeper than the bricks and mortor shops. If people were willing to make the rather major sift to online retailers, they will certainly be willing to make the relatively minor shift from one online retailer to another.
This isn't news....think airlines. They do this all the time. In economics, its called price descrimination. Business travelers pay more because they are willing to pay more. If you're willing to pay more for a CD from Amazon, for whatever reason (quality, serivce, availability, whatever...) than pay it. If not, shop around- the market will ensure that Amazon only services the customers that are willing to pay the prices they are charging.
Do you think that 2600.com's continued practice of posting URL's where DeCSS can be found, without making them hyperlinks, is in violation of the permenent injunction? It seems to me that even just posting a URL in plain text could be construed as trafficing?
If you think that Labor organizations are running the show in China's communist regime, you are sorely mistaken.
In a classic, textbook sense one could argue the Communism is strongly influenced by Labor but in reality, there has never been a wide-scale communist society which was not subject to the far-reaching iron-clad rule of an elite group of individuals.
Just because a company has the resources to defend itself doesn't mean that it makes us right in exploiting them at every possible turn. We talk all the time about how just legal treatment shouldn't be about money. Why should this standard be applied any differently when we are talking about the institutions which have the money rather than the people lacking it.
We can hardly moan that the little guy never gets any justice due to a lack of resources when we at the same time say that MS should be forced to spend infinite amounts of money to ensure that every offer they make to consumers is absolutely airtight. By taking advantage of MS, we are encouraging the very behavior which deplore in others....as long as those others happen to be the government or big business.
Actually, I think their argument with respect to increasing traffic flow has some merit. Traffic slowness occurs because perope are trying to cut people off and are generall driving poorly, not because they can't drive fast enough. Haven't you ever been in your car and wished that everyone would just drive 60 together.
With the number of cars on the road, I think that tightly regulating the speed would eliminate some of these probelms, and as I was saying earlier, traffic will get even lighter when people just flat out stop driving. All that being said, I still think its crazy that the government tries to control people's actions in this way. If you want to stop people from driving, give them incentives not to do so. Don't punish them and beat them into submission by taxing and annoying the shit out of them.
I suspect that this is just the government's new attempt at reducing the number of cars on the road. While the goals of reducing accidents and whatnot seems reasonable, I suspect that the government is betting that many people will simply stop driving. In a country which has used fuel taxes extensively in attempting to effect driving patterns, this seems suspiciously like another way of simply getting people off the road.
The depressing thing about Y2K is that there was no ending to the stoiry which would actually please people.
If everything had broken, it would have been our fault for not working hard enough to fix it, or for having used two digit dates in the first place.
Now that it appears that nothing has gone wrong, its somehow our fault for overblowing the whole situation and for wasting everyone's time and money. The fact that people are even contemplating that the world would have been an OK place without all of the effort invested into the Y2K problem shows that people take technology for granted when it works well and blame technology for all the evils of the world whenever it doesn't live up to their unrealistic expectations.
Guess what? Some of us may know a little something about things that are not related to technology. And furthermore, not everyone that reads/. leads a life filled to the brim with computing. I, for one, am a banker, and I think that discussions like this are a great supplement to the standard fare about which we more oftern converse.
I would second your thoughts on Yeltsin. The only thing which concerns me is the void in certain leaderhsip qualities which I think will be created by his departure.
Like it or not, he had the ability to use strong arm tactics and back room dealing to keep an incredibly unstable situation relatively orderly. When you look at all of the bumps in the road that Yeltsin has navigated either over or around, you have to wonder whether Putin will have that ability. The forces in the Duma and elsewhere will certainly be happy this New Year as the man who always seemed to have the last laugh is finally bowing out.
We've hung up a little on this neglegance issue but I think that its merely a side issue.
Most products liability suits these days are brought under a strict liability standard. Strict Liability basically states that if a corporation places a product into the stream of commerce, they are responsible for its functioning and are liable for its correct operation and function, even if the fault in the product is not due to neglegance on thier part.
This is at the crux of most suits you see today. Take for instance the many suits with respect to asbestos. While there is still some disagreement, many feel that the producers of asbestos, up to a point, weren't really knowledgable of the cancer causing nature of their product. But nevertheless, they have been held liable for its damage, because under the theory of strict liability, even though neither the consumer or the producer knew the dangers of the product, they are better able to bear the costs associated with their product than the consumers.
Nowadays, most products liability suits are brought under strict liability claims, and its is a legal standard which is well entrenched. M$ would have a much better chance and being sued successfully under strict liability because they have a better ability to bear the financial costs of the damages than their consumers. GLP'ed products are probably safe on this account, because their prodcuers are often no better able to absorb the financial impact of a faulty product that those using it.
All that being said, let me add the obligatory I-am-not-a-lawyer disclaimer. I am not a lawyer, so don't listen to me.
Its interesting that patents are sometimes seen as good by the/. crowd even when, if the same technology had been developed in an Open Surce enviornment, it would be freely available to everyone and would undoubtably be utilized in host of different ways. Why should an idea be worth more just because its invented by a group which is more interested in extracting financial value from it?
I think you've actually got it backwards though. You want to encourage saving because this is what actually drives the development and expansion of the economy, to an equal, if not greater extent than consumption.
When people save, they don't just shove the money under then bed (or, for the most part, stick it in an interest baring saving account, which is the real world equilivent). Especially in the last couple of years, people are increasingly putting this money into the equity or debt markets. This in turn, provides investment capital which the economy can use to grow. Who do you thing supports the US National Debt? Along with the savers from other countries (Net Foreign Investment, for the economics types out there), American savers do.
If you taxed people on their assets, this would have the exact opposite effect. People would consume as much as they could such that they had as little in the way for financial assests as possible. Unless you are proposing that we make people total up the value of everything they own, every year (eg. well I guess my TV is worth $50, PIII with Win98 installed: $0.05...etc) and depreciate its value like corporations do for their fixed assets, this tax becomes a short road massive over-consumption.
So we want nicely packaged info from the govn't on demand but we abhore taxes and can't see any reason why the internet should be taxed (refer to NC tax story). This has to ne paid for somehow....why not subsise it by charging the people who use it, rather than making us all pay.....
The USPS selling this information is analagous to a software company selling a GPL'ed software distriubtion. There's value added in the distribution method and in the easy of use area. The same is true for neatly packaged ZIP+4 info. That's what you're paying for
But the point is, a lot of states, including NC, require you to declare and pay taxes on the items which you purchase from a catalog or over the phone already. The internet provision is just meant to suppliment this existing tax. Now whether people pay the existing tax is another question altogther...
The common argument against sales taxes are that they are regressive. Take the example of two families, one which has an income of $25,000/yr and one with an income of $100,000/yr. The family with the $25,000 income would pay little or nothing in income tax, but they would have a very hefty tax burdon, as the vast majority of there income would be consumed and therefore subject to sales taxation. In the case of the family with the $100,000 income, presumably, some of this would be saved, and thus not subject to this addition taxation. Because higher income earners have the ability to save a higher portion of their income, they have the ability to escape this taxation. The most interesting, and IMHO, the fariest taxation scheme would be a progressive consumption based tax. The way it works: do away with sales tax and income tax, and instead tax people on a sliding scale based on their level of consumption. The argument is basically that consumption, as the name implies, is the real descrutive force in an economy...not earning income, which is what our current tax system is principally geared towards taking a slice of. Take for example those same two families.... Under this system, the $25,000/yr family would be taxed on their consumption (which is admittedly a large percantage of their income) but they would be charged a low (perhaps even 0%) rate, because their income is so low. On the other hand, the $100,000/yr family would be charged at a higher rate (you pick the actual scale, its pretty much irrelevent for this example) but only on the portion of their income that they consume. So if they only spend $10,000 and save or invest $90,000, they pay less taxes than if they go out and buy lots of stuff. This is the only system which punishes economically destructive activities and still protects those who need tax protection because of their low level of income. It also rewards those who work hard and don't piss all that money away.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly what markets exist for. If the price creeps up, customers who aren't willing to buy at the higher level will go elsewhere, or stay out of the market. In the ultimate case, you charge every customer exactly what they are willing to pay, as long as that price is above the cost of producing the good. Remember, the whole reason Amazon is still in existance is because they are cheeper than the bricks and mortor shops. If people were willing to make the rather major sift to online retailers, they will certainly be willing to make the relatively minor shift from one online retailer to another.
This isn't news....think airlines. They do this all the time. In economics, its called price descrimination. Business travelers pay more because they are willing to pay more. If you're willing to pay more for a CD from Amazon, for whatever reason (quality, serivce, availability, whatever...) than pay it. If not, shop around- the market will ensure that Amazon only services the customers that are willing to pay the prices they are charging.
Do you think that 2600.com's continued practice of posting URL's where DeCSS can be found, without making them hyperlinks, is in violation of the permenent injunction? It seems to me that even just posting a URL in plain text could be construed as trafficing?
If you think that Labor organizations are running the show in China's communist regime, you are sorely mistaken.
In a classic, textbook sense one could argue the Communism is strongly influenced by Labor but in reality, there has never been a wide-scale communist society which was not subject to the far-reaching iron-clad rule of an elite group of individuals.
Just because a company has the resources to defend itself doesn't mean that it makes us right in exploiting them at every possible turn. We talk all the time about how just legal treatment shouldn't be about money. Why should this standard be applied any differently when we are talking about the institutions which have the money rather than the people lacking it.
We can hardly moan that the little guy never gets any justice due to a lack of resources when we at the same time say that MS should be forced to spend infinite amounts of money to ensure that every offer they make to consumers is absolutely airtight. By taking advantage of MS, we are encouraging the very behavior which deplore in others....as long as those others happen to be the government or big business.
Actually, I think their argument with respect to increasing traffic flow has some merit. Traffic slowness occurs because perope are trying to cut people off and are generall driving poorly, not because they can't drive fast enough. Haven't you ever been in your car and wished that everyone would just drive 60 together.
With the number of cars on the road, I think that tightly regulating the speed would eliminate some of these probelms, and as I was saying earlier, traffic will get even lighter when people just flat out stop driving. All that being said, I still think its crazy that the government tries to control people's actions in this way. If you want to stop people from driving, give them incentives not to do so. Don't punish them and beat them into submission by taxing and annoying the shit out of them.
I suspect that this is just the government's new attempt at reducing the number of cars on the road. While the goals of reducing accidents and whatnot seems reasonable, I suspect that the government is betting that many people will simply stop driving. In a country which has used fuel taxes extensively in attempting to effect driving patterns, this seems suspiciously like another way of simply getting people off the road.
The depressing thing about Y2K is that there was no ending to the stoiry which would actually please people.
If everything had broken, it would have been our fault for not working hard enough to fix it, or for having used two digit dates in the first place.
Now that it appears that nothing has gone wrong, its somehow our fault for overblowing the whole situation and for wasting everyone's time and money. The fact that people are even contemplating that the world would have been an OK place without all of the effort invested into the Y2K problem shows that people take technology for granted when it works well and blame technology for all the evils of the world whenever it doesn't live up to their unrealistic expectations.
Guess what? Some of us may know a little something about things that are not related to technology. And furthermore, not everyone that reads /. leads a life filled to the brim with computing. I, for one, am a banker, and I think that discussions like this are a great supplement to the standard fare about which we more oftern converse.
I would second your thoughts on Yeltsin. The only thing which concerns me is the void in certain leaderhsip qualities which I think will be created by his departure.
Like it or not, he had the ability to use strong arm tactics and back room dealing to keep an incredibly unstable situation relatively orderly. When you look at all of the bumps in the road that Yeltsin has navigated either over or around, you have to wonder whether Putin will have that ability. The forces in the Duma and elsewhere will certainly be happy this New Year as the man who always seemed to have the last laugh is finally bowing out.
We've hung up a little on this neglegance issue but I think that its merely a side issue.
Most products liability suits these days are brought under a strict liability standard. Strict Liability basically states that if a corporation places a product into the stream of commerce, they are responsible for its functioning and are liable for its correct operation and function, even if the fault in the product is not due to neglegance on thier part.
This is at the crux of most suits you see today. Take for instance the many suits with respect to asbestos. While there is still some disagreement, many feel that the producers of asbestos, up to a point, weren't really knowledgable of the cancer causing nature of their product. But nevertheless, they have been held liable for its damage, because under the theory of strict liability, even though neither the consumer or the producer knew the dangers of the product, they are better able to bear the costs associated with their product than the consumers.
Nowadays, most products liability suits are brought under strict liability claims, and its is a legal standard which is well entrenched. M$ would have a much better chance and being sued successfully under strict liability because they have a better ability to bear the financial costs of the damages than their consumers. GLP'ed products are probably safe on this account, because their prodcuers are often no better able to absorb the financial impact of a faulty product that those using it.
All that being said, let me add the obligatory I-am-not-a-lawyer disclaimer. I am not a lawyer, so don't listen to me.
But the shareholders in IBM, by and large, are not interested in science for science sake.
People contibute to their alma mater if they're interested in promoting science, they don't buy stock.
Its interesting that patents are sometimes seen as good by the /. crowd even when, if the same technology had been developed in an Open Surce enviornment, it would be freely available to everyone and would undoubtably be utilized in host of different ways. Why should an idea be worth more just because its invented by a group which is more interested in extracting financial value from it?
I think you've actually got it backwards though. You want to encourage saving because this is what actually drives the development and expansion of the economy, to an equal, if not greater extent than consumption.
When people save, they don't just shove the money under then bed (or, for the most part, stick it in an interest baring saving account, which is the real world equilivent). Especially in the last couple of years, people are increasingly putting this money into the equity or debt markets. This in turn, provides investment capital which the economy can use to grow. Who do you thing supports the US National Debt? Along with the savers from other countries (Net Foreign Investment, for the economics types out there), American savers do.
If you taxed people on their assets, this would have the exact opposite effect. People would consume as much as they could such that they had as little in the way for financial assests as possible. Unless you are proposing that we make people total up the value of everything they own, every year (eg. well I guess my TV is worth $50, PIII with Win98 installed: $0.05...etc) and depreciate its value like corporations do for their fixed assets, this tax becomes a short road massive over-consumption.
So we want nicely packaged info from the govn't on demand but we abhore taxes and can't see any reason why the internet should be taxed (refer to NC tax story). This has to ne paid for somehow....why not subsise it by charging the people who use it, rather than making us all pay.....
The USPS selling this information is analagous to a software company selling a GPL'ed software distriubtion. There's value added in the distribution method and in the easy of use area. The same is true for neatly packaged ZIP+4 info. That's what you're paying for
But the point is, a lot of states, including NC, require you to declare and pay taxes on the items which you purchase from a catalog or over the phone already. The internet provision is just meant to suppliment this existing tax. Now whether people pay the existing tax is another question altogther...
The common argument against sales taxes are that they are regressive. Take the example of two families, one which has an income of $25,000/yr and one with an income of $100,000/yr. The family with the $25,000 income would pay little or nothing in income tax, but they would have a very hefty tax burdon, as the vast majority of there income would be consumed and therefore subject to sales taxation. In the case of the family with the $100,000 income, presumably, some of this would be saved, and thus not subject to this addition taxation. Because higher income earners have the ability to save a higher portion of their income, they have the ability to escape this taxation. The most interesting, and IMHO, the fariest taxation scheme would be a progressive consumption based tax. The way it works: do away with sales tax and income tax, and instead tax people on a sliding scale based on their level of consumption. The argument is basically that consumption, as the name implies, is the real descrutive force in an economy...not earning income, which is what our current tax system is principally geared towards taking a slice of. Take for example those same two families.... Under this system, the $25,000/yr family would be taxed on their consumption (which is admittedly a large percantage of their income) but they would be charged a low (perhaps even 0%) rate, because their income is so low. On the other hand, the $100,000/yr family would be charged at a higher rate (you pick the actual scale, its pretty much irrelevent for this example) but only on the portion of their income that they consume. So if they only spend $10,000 and save or invest $90,000, they pay less taxes than if they go out and buy lots of stuff. This is the only system which punishes economically destructive activities and still protects those who need tax protection because of their low level of income. It also rewards those who work hard and don't piss all that money away.