No.. In the instance that WoW2 doesn't install on older versions of Windows (and assuming I actually want to play it..) I'll go get that Apple that I always wanted. And I'd finally be able to justify spending all that money for a computer.
Actually, the mother wouldn't be in a conflict of interest, since the case against her was dismissed with prejudice. So if the RIAA files a lawsuit against the child, and the judge finds in favor of the child.. the mother is not open to further attack.
Now.. whether the mother can adequately represent her daughter's interests is another question.
I'm not sure of your point here. For most of the countries you list (since you don't list a public utility such as a state broadcaster that benefits), this appears to be a property tax of owning a tv, with tax revenue entering the government's general funds. Essentially, they tax your tv ownership so that they don't tax your income a little higher (or increase a sales tax. or any myriad other areas where governments may impose a tax). The other countries tax your tv, with funds going towards a specific utility for the (assumed) public good. You pay slightly for owning the tv, but you benefit (supposedly) by being able to watch free public broadcasts.
It would only be similar if the governments you list above are paying private sector companies out of the fees they are collecting. But even then, the similarity could break down if the private companies used the government money to produce content freely available to the public. Governments don't collect taxes to get rich. They collect them to provide a public benefit. Edgar Bronfman just wants Apple to pay him something for nothing.
Yes, someone could debate, as Edgar suggests in half-assed manner, that RIAA music is being used to promote iPod sales. However, I would immedately argue that if Edgar sees such untapped profit potential in digital downloads of his company's music, then why isn't Warner Music making preparations to let its license contract with Apple expire and start its own, in-house service. Then they could charge prices to collect the profits that Apple is apparently ignoring. Its obvious that Apple doesn't see any untapped profits out there. If they did, they would be foolish not to alter prices without any prodding from any outside source. Whether or not there actually is profit going uncollected is up for debate, and would make or break a Warner Music attempt to break into digital distribution.
I know this is difficult for some to believe.. but Canada is not an American state. Thus, having travel papers for entrance to Canda is no guarantee of having valid travel papers for entrance into the United States. Further, just because the guy had/has assistants to handle that sort of stuff in no ways guarantees that the employees are infallible. Granted, I don't know the actual status of his travel papers. But I won't rule out a possibility based on either of the parent post's assertions.
(Yeah.. This is offtopic from TFA's point. Sorry.)
Its an interesting case of the Fair Use doctrines. Since, while Google is going to try to profit off this move, it will do so only by matching readers to books and the publishers that print those books. (Note that I am ignoring entirely the non-copyright books that will be available in their entirety and the opt in books of the Print Publisher program as neither is under any sort of legal dispute). As for the other three factors that the courts will look at under a Fair Use defense.. well.. I have opinions for two, and none for the third. But I think it'll make for interesting reading.
This would be true if they were publishing the entirety of the works. But they are not.
Just because some of the text that Google wants to use is copyrighted does not automatically make it illegal for them to use. That's the bone of contention here.
The Print Publisher project isn't illegal in the slightest, because it is opt in by the copyright holders.
The Print Library project seems, to my wholly un-law schooled mind, like it has a pretty decent case for fair use. Yes, Google is (or at least is going to try) to make money off the searches. But the self-imposed restrictions on how much of the text displayed is so limited as to be slightly more useful than a card catalogue search. Thats all. I'll grant that some very determined user or users could possibly acquire an entire replica of a copyrighted work. However, you might then want to consider suing bookstores. They'll let me sit there and read whole chapters of a book without purchasing it. And if I was a very determined person, I could violate copyrights there, too.
Actually.. I'm not sure I see the need for Google to share profits from GPrint.
I'm something of an avid recreational reader. So, of the books that I actually plan to purchase, I have a fair idea of what I'm buying, when I buy it. Certainly there are a lot of books that I have read, either wholly or in part, that I have not purchased. These books tend to fall into the reference category. And these types of books I get for free from my library.
So, with the limitations that Google is placing on the quantity of text that an individual user will be able to access.. I'd be using the service to find books I need for papers.. and then be checking the books out of the library for complete, short term access. The publisher makes no money off me, and since I still need the physical book to read all the extra information out of the book that Google won't let me see, the library still purchases one or two copies of it. The publisher doesn't lose out. OR.. I search Google looking for a new novel I want to read. I find something promising in Google. But since I actually want to read the whole thing for entertainment, I go out to a bookstore (or hit up a webstore) and order it. The publisher still makes its money on the sale. In either case, the publisher isn't losing sales. Why, then, should they be given money for someone else's efforts?
The Library service is described as allowing you to view, literally, a few sentences at a time. Its not useful enough to write a paper with, thus it is not useful enough to forego finding the book in its entirety elsewhere. Assuming, that is, that the book has something in it you need/want. There are other, publisher-approved titles, of which you can view a few pages at a time, but supposedly no more than 20% of the entire work. Useful. Possibly enough for me to get around going to the library to check out a book for a paper. But I rather doubt it. Only for books that are out of copyright will the entire work be available.
A case could possibly be made that libraries will purchase fewer titles because people will go to the Print Library project or the Print Publisher project instead. I couldn't argue for this point because I don't really believe it. In the event that such a situation came to pass, then I could be persuaded that Google should split ad revenue with copyright holders for text in the Library program (as they already do/will under the Print Publisher program).
I have. I just didn't state it in a single sentance.
In this case, the developing company is hurt by lack of funding. Either they lay out their own cash for development, then we're back to the current model on patents, or we rely on those who need/may need the product to fund development.. in which case, I don't see enough people kicking in enough money to actually make it happen. For good or ill, its been my observation that a lot of people just don't care until something directly impacts their lives.
Without competition producers have little incentive to control prices.
This isn't true at all. Being in a patent-based monopoly doesn't give you any sort of control over the demand for what you're selling. The producer is concerned about profit. So under high prices, people drop out of the market. This reduces revenues.. and profits. Note here that although I am saying nothing about what I think the life of the patent should be.
People were inventing products long before patents were created.... I sorta fail to see how this is relevant. People were inventing before patents. Sure. Good observation. Would you also care to compare the number of inventions per year before patent law and after? I'll grant you that probably isn't a fair comparison. But then neither is your suggestion of comparing 600 year old markets and production to modern day markets and production.
If your competitors can beat you on price while matching your quality then your company is not being run very efficiently and if a deep understanding of the science behind the product is not necessary to produce it then the product is most likely not worthy of a patent in the first place.
Your competitors have the cost of production plus the minor cost of the time to clone your technology. The innovators have the cost of researching the entirely new technology, designing a product, and then the production costs on top of it. That is a vastly larger cost.
Any level of quality the innovating company can product, a competitor can clone for much cheaper. It isn't about one company being run more efficiently. And as I said before.. it takes a lot less understanding of a science to copy than it does to innovate.
I'm not sure I would say that they don't become a problem.
You say that as long as the initial investors get the results, it doesn't matter who else gets the results too. I don't see how exactly this is true.
There are going to be people who, knowing the development time for new medicines, will forego investing because they're already terminal. There will be plenty who will forego investment so that they can simply buy the resulting product later on. There are very probably some who will figure that the chances of actually finding a cure aren't likely and not invest for that reason. There are actually a lot of reasons for a person to be a free rider in this situation.
Sure, there's not likely to be competition under a patent-based production. So what?
Lacking patents entirely, there wouldn't be production of the new product at all, because the risk of losing money is high and returns are low.
I think you overestimate the natural advantage of being first to market. It won't much matter that you were first, if your competitors can match you on quality and beat you on price. And a deep understanding of a product isn't necessary to the copying company. They only need to understand the science enough to reproduce it. Sure, they probably won't be able to produce any new, next step in that line of technology.. but they won't need to do that either. They'll wait for someone else to do it, and copy that product too.
I am not, in any way, arguing that we should do away with free markets. Or the semi-free markets that are in operation.
I -am- saying, however (and I'll grant I may not have been as accurate as I could've been), that the post I was originally replying to was a little too black and white to be viable.
I can't really see why most/all university-held patents couldn't be licensed using non-exclusive licenses. But I haven't studied the situation a lot, so take that with a pinch of salt.
Actually.. under your example, there would still be free riders. You just change who they are.
Say 80% of people at risk for an AIDS infection put up $100 for development. Some firm takes this money and successfully produces a medicine that eliminates the AIDS condition. Do you only sell it to the people that dropped the money on development? Or do you sell it to everybody. Including the 20% of people who paid no money for its development.
You could grant the investors a discount, certainly. But in that case you'd be granting a protection. It isn't a patent, certainly, but I can't say that its any better. Nor can I say its worse. I just don't know enough about its feasability.
Without an exclusive license, free riders become a problem. Companies who did no work developing a technology can copy it. And they can produce it cheaper, because they didn't lay out any money to develop it. Their costs are only production costs. Whereas any company that actually did R&D has both the R&D costs -and- roughly the same production costs.
There's no competition there. The free riding companies have fewer costs, so they sell their product cheaper. The innovating company, at this point, can choose to either match the lower price and accept their development costs as losses or maintain their higher price and probably go out of business.
In either case, that company is no longer going to be creating new stuff. There's no money in it.
You know.. I would take the time to actually respond to this in an intellectual fashion. But you haven't bothered with anything other than insults and unjustified assertions. You've also backed away from your other 'examples' rather quickly when confronted with an explaination of just how the example didn't quite work out the way you thought it did.
Actually.. I did not say that factors other than supply contribute to price. I said that demand growing faster than supply quite adequately explains your single counter (which honestly had nothing to do with the relationship between taxes and demand), without disturbing in any way the fact that taxes increase the price of a product. And in doing so, taxes decrease the demand for a product compared to the demand for the exact same product untaxed. And in point of fact, I said all of this previously.
I also said:
Which is not to say that prices, demand, and production can't all be on the rise; however, it also says nothing about the relationship between taxes and demand.
the fact is.. taxes affect demand. And unless you can imagine a product where demand increases in -response- to a price increase (not in -spite- of a price increase), then taxes and demand are inversely related.
I'm putting this last comment down here in the hopes that words will not be placed in my mouth. I do actually believe that prices are determined by factors other than supply. I know they are. Supply without demand means nothing. There are yet other factors, one of them happens to be taxes. But in the -last- post, I made no general statement about prices or its factors. Only a very specific statement about a specific example.
Google is not, at this time, using "tying" arrangements, in any way that I am aware of. If you want to use Desktop Search, you can. If you want the Toolbar, its there for you. Google's web search service is not crippled in any fashion if you opt not to use Google's other products. A tying arrangement would force you to purchase (install) one or more products (presumably ones you wouldn't want) in order to purchase/utilize other products.
As for migrating a GDS db to another desktop search tool.. that cuts both ways. I don't think that second search tool is going to export its db to third search tool, or back into GDS. Is this second search tool then utilizing monopolistic powers? How would it be possible for two products in the same market to both wield monopoly powers? Although really, in point of fact, if you wanted to migrate to another desktop search tool... go for it. Google isn't stopping you, nor do I see any way that they possibly could other than by offering a superior product. You can rebuild your index with the new tool, and search locally just as well. Or at least, if you can't search locally with the second tool equally as well, I can't see why it would be for any reason other than the second tool is technically inferior.
"Probably? I don't think so. The increasing oil prices despite the increased production by OPEC seems to contradict your theory."
The fact that oil prices and production are both rising is more likely an artifact of demand growing faster than supply. There's no contradiction between what I stated and what is observed in the world. When you quoted me, you forgot to add the part 'by raising price.' Its rather difficult to imagine a product where demand increases in response to an increase in price. Which is not to say that prices, demand, and production can't all be on the rise; however, it also says nothing about the relationship between taxes and demand. The price of fuel where I live is something like USD 0.25 per gallon. I'm pretty confident that demand would be higher for the non-taxed fuel, by virtue of the fact that it is a quarter dollar per gallon cheaper without altering any of its other qualities.
Of course, should the fuel tax here be elminated and demand rise in response, the end result is that the price of fuel would be bid up, since the elimination of the tax doesn't magically make more fuel available.
Where I live, there are two such sodium lamps nearby. Somewhat fortunately, they're obscured. But they're still bright enough to make getting to sleep somewhat annoying. And its all so that a double handful or so of cars can see at night. Silly me, I use my headlights for such purposes.
(Yes, for the nitpick/. crowd, I understand that the lights are also useful for pedestrians. If there were a lot of these, I might allow that their benefits outweigh the costs. There aren't that many, however. So I'm thinking that some simple, cheap handheld lights would suffice for them.)
Actually, taxing fuel probably -does- lower demand, by increasing price. And because demand is down over what it otherwise would be, the oil industry is smaller than it otherwise would be. Which means the oil industry does not employ as many workers and maintains less equipment than it would in the absence of the tax. So, yes.. Taxes do affect levels of employment.
In addition, the statement:
"Also, don't you think that there would be even more people working in oil-related fields if the price was so low that it was everywhere (imagine gas-powered laptops being workable)?"
does not state that sectors with the lowest cost employ the most people. It would be more accurate to say that the statement asserts that the sector with the broadest application of its product employs the most people.
Actually.. all forms of auction will tend towards the same price for the same item.
In the case of second bid auctions (relative to first bid) you are more likely to bid higher, because you know you don't have to pay what you bid. If you win, you pay what the next guy bid. But.. you also know that other people react the same way. So, where as you might've been willing to bid $100 for something under a first bid system, you may goto $110 under second bid. But in second place might've stopped at 90, and would be willing to go up to 100 under second bid, and you end up paying $100 anyway. And you can take this out to any number of places. Say, you pay what the third highest person bid, and the same sort of situation would arise. There's even an auction type where the high bid takes the item for free and all the losing bids pay their bid. Its called the "Glum Losers" auction style. Here you've got two countervailing incentives. One, high bid means you pay nothing means you want to bid high. Two, if some other joker bids even higher, you pay what you bid, so you bid reasonable. But not as high as you would if you paid nothing for losing. In the end, the money paid out to the seller ends up being roughly equal over time.
Personally, I'd choose the Glum Loser's style, just cause I'm a sadistic bastard and I'd want you to pay and not get anything out of it.
and for the guy who said there's always some joker out there to bid millions on some trinket... sure there is. There's also another joker to bid 103 million. And then you're screwed. Thats why people wouldn't. Or if you would, and you default, you're banned from the auction system and thus you can't.
Slashdot Mirror
No.. In the instance that WoW2 doesn't install on older versions of Windows (and assuming I actually want to play it..) I'll go get that Apple that I always wanted. And I'd finally be able to justify spending all that money for a computer.
Actually, the mother wouldn't be in a conflict of interest, since the case against her was dismissed with prejudice. So if the RIAA files a lawsuit against the child, and the judge finds in favor of the child.. the mother is not open to further attack.
Now.. whether the mother can adequately represent her daughter's interests is another question.
I'm not sure of your point here. For most of the countries you list (since you don't list a public utility such as a state broadcaster that benefits), this appears to be a property tax of owning a tv, with tax revenue entering the government's general funds. Essentially, they tax your tv ownership so that they don't tax your income a little higher (or increase a sales tax. or any myriad other areas where governments may impose a tax). The other countries tax your tv, with funds going towards a specific utility for the (assumed) public good. You pay slightly for owning the tv, but you benefit (supposedly) by being able to watch free public broadcasts.
It would only be similar if the governments you list above are paying private sector companies out of the fees they are collecting. But even then, the similarity could break down if the private companies used the government money to produce content freely available to the public. Governments don't collect taxes to get rich. They collect them to provide a public benefit. Edgar Bronfman just wants Apple to pay him something for nothing.
Yes, someone could debate, as Edgar suggests in half-assed manner, that RIAA music is being used to promote iPod sales. However, I would immedately argue that if Edgar sees such untapped profit potential in digital downloads of his company's music, then why isn't Warner Music making preparations to let its license contract with Apple expire and start its own, in-house service. Then they could charge prices to collect the profits that Apple is apparently ignoring. Its obvious that Apple doesn't see any untapped profits out there. If they did, they would be foolish not to alter prices without any prodding from any outside source. Whether or not there actually is profit going uncollected is up for debate, and would make or break a Warner Music attempt to break into digital distribution.
Actually, iTunes offers more efficiency than you mention.
Most albums don't have great songs across the board. iTunes lets you not pay for the songs you don't give a flip about.
I know this is difficult for some to believe.. but Canada is not an American state. Thus, having travel papers for entrance to Canda is no guarantee of having valid travel papers for entrance into the United States. Further, just because the guy had/has assistants to handle that sort of stuff in no ways guarantees that the employees are infallible. Granted, I don't know the actual status of his travel papers. But I won't rule out a possibility based on either of the parent post's assertions.
(Yeah.. This is offtopic from TFA's point. Sorry.)
Copyrighted books are not limited to 'x pages, or whatever.' They are limited to sentences around a search term hit. At best.
Check it out. Google Print Info
Its an interesting case of the Fair Use doctrines. Since, while Google is going to try to profit off this move, it will do so only by matching readers to books and the publishers that print those books. (Note that I am ignoring entirely the non-copyright books that will be available in their entirety and the opt in books of the Print Publisher program as neither is under any sort of legal dispute). As for the other three factors that the courts will look at under a Fair Use defense.. well.. I have opinions for two, and none for the third. But I think it'll make for interesting reading.
This would be true if they were publishing the entirety of the works. But they are not.
Just because some of the text that Google wants to use is copyrighted does not automatically make it illegal for them to use. That's the bone of contention here.
The Print Publisher project isn't illegal in the slightest, because it is opt in by the copyright holders.
The Print Library project seems, to my wholly un-law schooled mind, like it has a pretty decent case for fair use. Yes, Google is (or at least is going to try) to make money off the searches. But the self-imposed restrictions on how much of the text displayed is so limited as to be slightly more useful than a card catalogue search. Thats all. I'll grant that some very determined user or users could possibly acquire an entire replica of a copyrighted work. However, you might then want to consider suing bookstores. They'll let me sit there and read whole chapters of a book without purchasing it. And if I was a very determined person, I could violate copyrights there, too.
Actually.. I'm not sure I see the need for Google to share profits from GPrint.
I'm something of an avid recreational reader. So, of the books that I actually plan to purchase, I have a fair idea of what I'm buying, when I buy it. Certainly there are a lot of books that I have read, either wholly or in part, that I have not purchased. These books tend to fall into the reference category. And these types of books I get for free from my library.
So, with the limitations that Google is placing on the quantity of text that an individual user will be able to access.. I'd be using the service to find books I need for papers.. and then be checking the books out of the library for complete, short term access. The publisher makes no money off me, and since I still need the physical book to read all the extra information out of the book that Google won't let me see, the library still purchases one or two copies of it. The publisher doesn't lose out. OR.. I search Google looking for a new novel I want to read. I find something promising in Google. But since I actually want to read the whole thing for entertainment, I go out to a bookstore (or hit up a webstore) and order it. The publisher still makes its money on the sale. In either case, the publisher isn't losing sales. Why, then, should they be given money for someone else's efforts?
The Library service is described as allowing you to view, literally, a few sentences at a time. Its not useful enough to write a paper with, thus it is not useful enough to forego finding the book in its entirety elsewhere. Assuming, that is, that the book has something in it you need/want. There are other, publisher-approved titles, of which you can view a few pages at a time, but supposedly no more than 20% of the entire work. Useful. Possibly enough for me to get around going to the library to check out a book for a paper. But I rather doubt it. Only for books that are out of copyright will the entire work be available.
A case could possibly be made that libraries will purchase fewer titles because people will go to the Print Library project or the Print Publisher project instead. I couldn't argue for this point because I don't really believe it. In the event that such a situation came to pass, then I could be persuaded that Google should split ad revenue with copyright holders for text in the Library program (as they already do/will under the Print Publisher program).
I have. I just didn't state it in a single sentance.
In this case, the developing company is hurt by lack of funding. Either they lay out their own cash for development, then we're back to the current model on patents, or we rely on those who need/may need the product to fund development.. in which case, I don't see enough people kicking in enough money to actually make it happen. For good or ill, its been my observation that a lot of people just don't care until something directly impacts their lives.
Without competition producers have little incentive to control prices.
... I sorta fail to see how this is relevant. People were inventing before patents. Sure. Good observation. Would you also care to compare the number of inventions per year before patent law and after? I'll grant you that probably isn't a fair comparison. But then neither is your suggestion of comparing 600 year old markets and production to modern day markets and production.
This isn't true at all. Being in a patent-based monopoly doesn't give you any sort of control over the demand for what you're selling. The producer is concerned about profit. So under high prices, people drop out of the market. This reduces revenues.. and profits. Note here that although I am saying nothing about what I think the life of the patent should be.
People were inventing products long before patents were created.
If your competitors can beat you on price while matching your quality then your company is not being run very efficiently and if a deep understanding of the science behind the product is not necessary to produce it then the product is most likely not worthy of a patent in the first place.
Your competitors have the cost of production plus the minor cost of the time to clone your technology. The innovators have the cost of researching the entirely new technology, designing a product, and then the production costs on top of it. That is a vastly larger cost.
Any level of quality the innovating company can product, a competitor can clone for much cheaper. It isn't about one company being run more efficiently. And as I said before.. it takes a lot less understanding of a science to copy than it does to innovate.
I'm not sure I would say that they don't become a problem.
You say that as long as the initial investors get the results, it doesn't matter who else gets the results too. I don't see how exactly this is true.
There are going to be people who, knowing the development time for new medicines, will forego investing because they're already terminal. There will be plenty who will forego investment so that they can simply buy the resulting product later on. There are very probably some who will figure that the chances of actually finding a cure aren't likely and not invest for that reason. There are actually a lot of reasons for a person to be a free rider in this situation.
Sure, there's not likely to be competition under a patent-based production. So what?
Lacking patents entirely, there wouldn't be production of the new product at all, because the risk of losing money is high and returns are low.
I think you overestimate the natural advantage of being first to market. It won't much matter that you were first, if your competitors can match you on quality and beat you on price. And a deep understanding of a product isn't necessary to the copying company. They only need to understand the science enough to reproduce it. Sure, they probably won't be able to produce any new, next step in that line of technology.. but they won't need to do that either. They'll wait for someone else to do it, and copy that product too.
I am not, in any way, arguing that we should do away with free markets. Or the semi-free markets that are in operation.
I -am- saying, however (and I'll grant I may not have been as accurate as I could've been), that the post I was originally replying to was a little too black and white to be viable.
I can't really see why most/all university-held patents couldn't be licensed using non-exclusive licenses. But I haven't studied the situation a lot, so take that with a pinch of salt.
Actually.. under your example, there would still be free riders. You just change who they are.
Say 80% of people at risk for an AIDS infection put up $100 for development. Some firm takes this money and successfully produces a medicine that eliminates the AIDS condition. Do you only sell it to the people that dropped the money on development? Or do you sell it to everybody. Including the 20% of people who paid no money for its development.
You could grant the investors a discount, certainly. But in that case you'd be granting a protection. It isn't a patent, certainly, but I can't say that its any better. Nor can I say its worse. I just don't know enough about its feasability.
There is a concept called the Free Rider problem.
Without an exclusive license, free riders become a problem. Companies who did no work developing a technology can copy it. And they can produce it cheaper, because they didn't lay out any money to develop it. Their costs are only production costs. Whereas any company that actually did R&D has both the R&D costs -and- roughly the same production costs.
There's no competition there. The free riding companies have fewer costs, so they sell their product cheaper. The innovating company, at this point, can choose to either match the lower price and accept their development costs as losses or maintain their higher price and probably go out of business.
In either case, that company is no longer going to be creating new stuff. There's no money in it.
You know.. I would take the time to actually respond to this in an intellectual fashion. But you haven't bothered with anything other than insults and unjustified assertions. You've also backed away from your other 'examples' rather quickly when confronted with an explaination of just how the example didn't quite work out the way you thought it did.
Actually.. I did not say that factors other than supply contribute to price. I said that demand growing faster than supply quite adequately explains your single counter (which honestly had nothing to do with the relationship between taxes and demand), without disturbing in any way the fact that taxes increase the price of a product. And in doing so, taxes decrease the demand for a product compared to the demand for the exact same product untaxed. And in point of fact, I said all of this previously.
I also said:
Which is not to say that prices, demand, and production can't all be on the rise; however, it also says nothing about the relationship between taxes and demand.
the fact is.. taxes affect demand. And unless you can imagine a product where demand increases in -response- to a price increase (not in -spite- of a price increase), then taxes and demand are inversely related.
I'm putting this last comment down here in the hopes that words will not be placed in my mouth. I do actually believe that prices are determined by factors other than supply. I know they are. Supply without demand means nothing. There are yet other factors, one of them happens to be taxes. But in the -last- post, I made no general statement about prices or its factors. Only a very specific statement about a specific example.
Google is not, at this time, using "tying" arrangements, in any way that I am aware of. If you want to use Desktop Search, you can. If you want the Toolbar, its there for you. Google's web search service is not crippled in any fashion if you opt not to use Google's other products. A tying arrangement would force you to purchase (install) one or more products (presumably ones you wouldn't want) in order to purchase/utilize other products.
As for migrating a GDS db to another desktop search tool.. that cuts both ways. I don't think that second search tool is going to export its db to third search tool, or back into GDS. Is this second search tool then utilizing monopolistic powers? How would it be possible for two products in the same market to both wield monopoly powers? Although really, in point of fact, if you wanted to migrate to another desktop search tool... go for it. Google isn't stopping you, nor do I see any way that they possibly could other than by offering a superior product. You can rebuild your index with the new tool, and search locally just as well. Or at least, if you can't search locally with the second tool equally as well, I can't see why it would be for any reason other than the second tool is technically inferior.
"Probably? I don't think so. The increasing oil prices despite the increased production by OPEC seems to contradict your theory."
The fact that oil prices and production are both rising is more likely an artifact of demand growing faster than supply. There's no contradiction between what I stated and what is observed in the world. When you quoted me, you forgot to add the part 'by raising price.' Its rather difficult to imagine a product where demand increases in response to an increase in price. Which is not to say that prices, demand, and production can't all be on the rise; however, it also says nothing about the relationship between taxes and demand. The price of fuel where I live is something like USD 0.25 per gallon. I'm pretty confident that demand would be higher for the non-taxed fuel, by virtue of the fact that it is a quarter dollar per gallon cheaper without altering any of its other qualities.
Of course, should the fuel tax here be elminated and demand rise in response, the end result is that the price of fuel would be bid up, since the elimination of the tax doesn't magically make more fuel available.
Where I live, there are two such sodium lamps nearby. Somewhat fortunately, they're obscured. But they're still bright enough to make getting to sleep somewhat annoying. And its all so that a double handful or so of cars can see at night. Silly me, I use my headlights for such purposes.
/. crowd, I understand that the lights are also useful for pedestrians. If there were a lot of these, I might allow that their benefits outweigh the costs. There aren't that many, however. So I'm thinking that some simple, cheap handheld lights would suffice for them.)
(Yes, for the nitpick
Actually, taxing fuel probably -does- lower demand, by increasing price. And because demand is down over what it otherwise would be, the oil industry is smaller than it otherwise would be. Which means the oil industry does not employ as many workers and maintains less equipment than it would in the absence of the tax. So, yes.. Taxes do affect levels of employment.
In addition, the statement:
"Also, don't you think that there would be even more people working in oil-related fields if the price was so low that it was everywhere (imagine gas-powered laptops being workable)?"
does not state that sectors with the lowest cost employ the most people. It would be more accurate to say that the statement asserts that the sector with the broadest application of its product employs the most people.
Actually.. all forms of auction will tend towards the same price for the same item.
In the case of second bid auctions (relative to first bid) you are more likely to bid higher, because you know you don't have to pay what you bid. If you win, you pay what the next guy bid. But.. you also know that other people react the same way. So, where as you might've been willing to bid $100 for something under a first bid system, you may goto $110 under second bid. But in second place might've stopped at 90, and would be willing to go up to 100 under second bid, and you end up paying $100 anyway. And you can take this out to any number of places. Say, you pay what the third highest person bid, and the same sort of situation would arise. There's even an auction type where the high bid takes the item for free and all the losing bids pay their bid. Its called the "Glum Losers" auction style. Here you've got two countervailing incentives. One, high bid means you pay nothing means you want to bid high. Two, if some other joker bids even higher, you pay what you bid, so you bid reasonable. But not as high as you would if you paid nothing for losing. In the end, the money paid out to the seller ends up being roughly equal over time.
Personally, I'd choose the Glum Loser's style, just cause I'm a sadistic bastard and I'd want you to pay and not get anything out of it.
and for the guy who said there's always some joker out there to bid millions on some trinket... sure there is. There's also another joker to bid 103 million. And then you're screwed. Thats why people wouldn't. Or if you would, and you default, you're banned from the auction system and thus you can't.