How can demand be "artificial"? Regardless of what motivates a consumer - a snazzy promotion, a Consumer Reports article, or just a whim - doesn't a purchase imply a demand?
The justification of antitrust law is that it protects consumers, not competitors. The case against MS is an abuse of the law, not that that's unusual. The case against Northern Pacific was an abuse, so was that against Standard Oil. Companies that offer cheaper, better products are not monopolies. Monopolists are, by definition, pricey and stagnant.
Judge Learned Hand's word's against ALCOA show how antitrust law is misused to stiffle competition and harm consumers:
Nothing compelled [ALCOA] to keep doubling and redoubling its capacity before others entered the field. It insists that it never excluded competitors; but we can think of no more effective exclusion than progressively to embrace each new opportunity as it opened, and to face every newcomer with new capacity already geared into a great organization, having the advantage of experience, trade connections, and the elite of personnel.
He's chastizing them, not for hurting consumers, but for running a competitive business. Antitrust law seems like a good idea in theory (as a shield for consumers), but in reality it is used by uncompetitive companies as a sword against their betters.
The only real definition of a monopolist is someone who can raise prices while restricing output. See the Credit Mobilier scandal if you want to learn what real anticompetitive practices are.
Might I submit for your consideration that you've listed the wrong keys to US success?
Imperialism is not a long term predicator of national success. It's often rather a result of success; if you're doing well enough to feed a large army, you can engage in conquest. Conquest does not always impy large scale transfers of wealth, Cortez being the biggest exception. Conquered peoples can thrive: England after Rome, Hong Kong after England, Spain after the Moors. As evil as conquest may be, I don't think it's an end-all explanation for the gross disparities in wealth that exist around the world.
Slavery exists today in Mauritania and Sudan, and it hasn't helped those countries achieve any measure of success. Slavery is an inefficient, stagnant labor system that wastes talent and resources. American slavery was exploitative and hypocrytical, but it didn't guarantee economic success to the US.
The economist Thomas Sowell put it, "humans may disriminate retail, but nature discriminates wholesale." Geography is a big culprit in wealth disparity. And navigable waterways are a main predicator of wealth: Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London, Istanbul, Paris... the richest places in the world are those closest to major waterways. Africa's bane is that with twice the size of Europe, it still has less shoreline because of its lack of inlets and harbors.
If I understand your viewpoint it's that consumers are helpless victims of advertising. What happened to all the dot-coms that ran brilliant ads during the Super Bowl a few years ago? Pets.com had that great sock puppet spokesman - they should have cornered the market.
Dell MP3 players are cheaper, but they're not as stylish. The Dell DJ is clunky - the iPod is svelte. Apple isn't bamboozling people with sexy iPod ads; style has a legitimate value for a product you carry around with you.
The failing of a "superior" product is often the fault of a competing product with a better value. Betamax had a clearer picture than VHS, but Sony's refusal to license Beta meant VHS was a better product. Beta was the superior technology - VHS was the superior product. QWERTY versus Dvorak keyboards is another popular example, but Dvorak's superiority has been debunked.
Starbucks didn't go from one store in Seattle to 7,200 stores around the world without a commitment to quality coffee. They didn't ride the wave of the gourmet coffee craze. They got that wave rolling. Starbucks success is the result of hard work and gutsy risk-taking by its founders. In the words of Nation's Restaurant News, "Simply put, Starbucks spends only about $5 million or so on advertising, but it's gotten a remarkable return on its investment by creating a cult following among coffee drinkers."
My tastes are a little more gourmet than McDonald's. But McDonald's has a product with wide appeal: it's cheap, it's consistent, it's exactly what the man on the street wants. If McDonalds sold eggplant sandwiches with goat cheese, they wouldn't be successful. You and I may not personally like it, but the Big Mac is a superior product. It hasn't been foisted on hapless consumers through ubiquity or ballyhoo.
I can't think of a single example of a company that has thrived in the long term with a weak product and strong marketing.
Starbucks grew tremendously while spending peanuts on advertising and relying on word of mouth. Zima Beverage Co spent oodles on ads but word of mouth kept it from being a hit.
Razzmatazz can't make up for an inferior product. If it could, I'd be typing this on a PCjr and drinking New Coke. OS X, iMac, iPod, iMovie, et al. are the keys to Apple's success - advertising is tangential.
Re:Stop trying to emulate Windows XP/98/2000.
on
Xandros version 2
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· Score: 1
Before I knew anything about Unix/Linux, I wanted to set up a Linux system at home for a school project. Corel Linux (now Xandros) made it simple because it was set up to make sense to a Windows user. It was like going from IE to Firebird. They made it easy for you.
Most flame wars you read about user interface issues focus on the wrong thing. Windows is better because it gives you more ways to resize the window. So what? That's missing the point. The point is, does the UI respond to the user in the way in which the user expected it to respond? If it didn't, the user is going to feel helpless and out of control... - Joel Spolsky
Corel Linux did the best job of providing a distro that a Windows user could easily jump into. It was intuitive, well organized, and polished. If Xandros has kept on the path Corel started this should be a nice release.
Remember "push technology" circa 1999? "Active Channels" and "NetCaster" were supposed to revolutionize the Internet. I hated the silly "channels" bar that popped up by default in Windows after IE 4 was installed. Yeah, Microsoft, instead of searching the Web for things I'm interested in, I want you to "push" your sponsors' lame content at me. Well, at least they caught on quickly and dropped it.
For me this was another example of consumers ruling the marketplace with an iron fist. You can't get us to drive Edsels, drink New Coke, or subscribe to Active Channels, no matter how much money you have.
Enough of the conjecture and hearsay already! Tolkien was adamantly anti-racist. He risked forgoing publication of the Hobbit in German to avoid giving credence to the "race-doctrine". The publisher wanted him to pledge that he had no Jewish ancestry. In Tolkien's words, "I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine."
Don't be disillusioned; people are being helped by recycling:
The main beneficiaries of the [recycling] program are government bureaucrats; local governments; and the waste management, public relations, and recycling industries. The losers are the households and commercial establishments that finance recycling through hidden taxes but derive
no appreciable environmental benefit.
Life is hard here in the US in 2003; open your eyes people! I know of children in this "land of opportunity" who are scraping by without even the benefit of a current generation game console!
What we need is a return to the hunter/gatherer economy. The ONLY economic system that has ever ensured full employment.
I benefit from being able to buy German beer, Japanense video games, French cheese, Canadian video cards, Turkish tobacco... Shouldn't people produce and sell what they can do best? If Indians (or Romanians) are efficient at producting software, more power to them. The economist Thomas Sowell does a good job of explaining why different countries are good at different things.
I remember some years back when there was a local uproar about a Home Depot being built in Auburn, California. The big complaint was that Home Depot is a Georgia based company. Folks didn't want their California dollars going out of state to those Georgians all the way on the other side of the US. The cost of living is cheaper in Georgia. Buying things from Georgians is a "race to the bottom". Only buy things made in your own state... no, your own town... no, only things you make yourself!
---
"If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." - Milton Friedman
Oh, and have you heard about the oil companies covering up the invention of water-powered cars?
The truth about the GM transit conspiracy is boring and has nothing to do with cars. What GM actually did was conspire to have GM transit companies buy only GM-made buses. It's an antitrust issue, but not at all what the myth makes it out to be.
An instructive comparison might be the tariffs Intel wanted on cheap RAM from Asia.
Cheaper RAM hurt Intel in the short term - Intel accused foreign competitors of "dumping". But in the long term, cheap RAM made the tech industry grow. We wouldn't have 128MB video cards today if Intel had successfully lobbied to use tariffs to stiffle competition back then.
--- "Most of the statutes, or acts, edicts, and placards of parliaments, and states for regulating and directing of trade have been either political blunders or obtained by artful men for private advantage under pretence of public good." -Benjamin Franklin,
Another good cook book for beginner's is Elaine Corn's "Now You're Cooking". It has the basic information that a beginner needs to get comfortable with the essentials of cooking. It's very user friendly and has lots of good tips that would take a novice a lot of trial and error to learn otherwise.
"The most serious social problem I can realistically imagine being created by the adoption of natural language technology is unemployment. The concept that AI will put call centers out of business is not far-fetched. Many more people in service professions could potentially be automated out of a job by chat robots."
The hunter-gather economy guaranteed full employment - automation raises the standard of living. Isn't "eliminating jobs" the best result of AI: automating tasks so people don't have to do tedious work like manning call centers? Worrying about automated call centers causing unemployment doesn't seem any more reasonable to me than worrying that Thomas Edison hurt the candlemaking business.
To paraphrase P.J. O'Roarke, its not like the economy is a pizza and if I have too many slices you're left with just the box. If economics were a zero-sum game like that, then more immigrants would mean less jobs. Since, in fact, immigrants must spend their money on services and products made by natives, they create as many jobs as they fill.
Stephen Moore at the Cato Institute did an interesting study about the H1-B issue:
"...every additional high-tech worker brings to the United States about $110,000 of free human capital. An additional 50,000 H1-b immigrant visas is the equivalent of a $5.5 billion transfer of wealth from the citizens of foreign countries to the citizens of the United States. High-tech immigration is like reverse foreign aid."
This issue isn't unique to modern times or the computer industry. A patent lawyer named George Selden used a vague patent to force people who built cars in the 1800's to pay a licensing fee. It wasn't until Henry Ford challenged that patent in 1903 that the auto industry took off.
The bet you're refering to was canceled. South and Simon had agreed to nullify the bet if government price controls on timber were imposed.
When logging regulation and timber import restrictions from Canada artificially inflated the cost of timber, the particular issue that they were betting on became moot.
When government regulation increases the price of a commodity, it isn't the same issue as whether Earth's resources are being depleted. Sugar prices are much higher in the US than they need to be because of regulation, but that doesn't mean Earth is being depleted of sugar canes.
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How can demand be "artificial"? Regardless of what motivates a consumer - a snazzy promotion, a Consumer Reports article, or just a whim - doesn't a purchase imply a demand?
I don't think there's any doubt that Standard Oil brought prices down while increasing quality and output. All the complaints were from their competitors, not their customers; quite the opposite of a real monopoly.
That predatory pricing is a myth isn't so controversial. Like many political issues, it's often a case of a special interest claiming government protection for their narrow interests, while pretending that it's for the sake of the general public. Netscape complained about Microsoft giving IE away for free, but I didn't hear complaints from any consumers.
Judge Learned Hand's word's against ALCOA show how antitrust law is misused to stiffle competition and harm consumers:
He's chastizing them, not for hurting consumers, but for running a competitive business. Antitrust law seems like a good idea in theory (as a shield for consumers), but in reality it is used by uncompetitive companies as a sword against their betters.
The only real definition of a monopolist is someone who can raise prices while restricing output. See the Credit Mobilier scandal if you want to learn what real anticompetitive practices are.
Searching for " review" usually works for me. If I just want prices I use froogle.google.com
Might I submit for your consideration that you've listed the wrong keys to US success?
Imperialism is not a long term predicator of national success. It's often rather a result of success; if you're doing well enough to feed a large army, you can engage in conquest. Conquest does not always impy large scale transfers of wealth, Cortez being the biggest exception. Conquered peoples can thrive: England after Rome, Hong Kong after England, Spain after the Moors. As evil as conquest may be, I don't think it's an end-all explanation for the gross disparities in wealth that exist around the world.
Slavery exists today in Mauritania and Sudan, and it hasn't helped those countries achieve any measure of success. Slavery is an inefficient, stagnant labor system that wastes talent and resources. American slavery was exploitative and hypocrytical, but it didn't guarantee economic success to the US.
The economist Thomas Sowell put it, "humans may disriminate retail, but nature discriminates wholesale." Geography is a big culprit in wealth disparity. And navigable waterways are a main predicator of wealth: Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London, Istanbul, Paris... the richest places in the world are those closest to major waterways. Africa's bane is that with twice the size of Europe, it still has less shoreline because of its lack of inlets and harbors.
If I understand your viewpoint it's that consumers are helpless victims of advertising. What happened to all the dot-coms that ran brilliant ads during the Super Bowl a few years ago? Pets.com had that great sock puppet spokesman - they should have cornered the market.
Dell MP3 players are cheaper, but they're not as stylish. The Dell DJ is clunky - the iPod is svelte. Apple isn't bamboozling people with sexy iPod ads; style has a legitimate value for a product you carry around with you.
The failing of a "superior" product is often the fault of a competing product with a better value. Betamax had a clearer picture than VHS, but Sony's refusal to license Beta meant VHS was a better product. Beta was the superior technology - VHS was the superior product. QWERTY versus Dvorak keyboards is another popular example, but Dvorak's superiority has been debunked.
Starbucks didn't go from one store in Seattle to 7,200 stores around the world without a commitment to quality coffee. They didn't ride the wave of the gourmet coffee craze. They got that wave rolling. Starbucks success is the result of hard work and gutsy risk-taking by its founders. In the words of Nation's Restaurant News, "Simply put, Starbucks spends only about $5 million or so on advertising, but it's gotten a remarkable return on its investment by creating a cult following among coffee drinkers."
My tastes are a little more gourmet than McDonald's. But McDonald's has a product with wide appeal: it's cheap, it's consistent, it's exactly what the man on the street wants. If McDonalds sold eggplant sandwiches with goat cheese, they wouldn't be successful. You and I may not personally like it, but the Big Mac is a superior product. It hasn't been foisted on hapless consumers through ubiquity or ballyhoo.
I can't think of a single example of a company that has thrived in the long term with a weak product and strong marketing.
Starbucks grew tremendously while spending peanuts on advertising and relying on word of mouth. Zima Beverage Co spent oodles on ads but word of mouth kept it from being a hit.
Razzmatazz can't make up for an inferior product. If it could, I'd be typing this on a PCjr and drinking New Coke. OS X, iMac, iPod, iMovie, et al. are the keys to Apple's success - advertising is tangential.
Corel Linux did the best job of providing a distro that a Windows user could easily jump into. It was intuitive, well organized, and polished. If Xandros has kept on the path Corel started this should be a nice release.
Remember "push technology" circa 1999? "Active Channels" and "NetCaster" were supposed to revolutionize the Internet. I hated the silly "channels" bar that popped up by default in Windows after IE 4 was installed. Yeah, Microsoft, instead of searching the Web for things I'm interested in, I want you to "push" your sponsors' lame content at me. Well, at least they caught on quickly and dropped it.
For me this was another example of consumers ruling the marketplace with an iron fist. You can't get us to drive Edsels, drink New Coke, or subscribe to Active Channels, no matter how much money you have.
Enough of the conjecture and hearsay already! Tolkien was adamantly anti-racist. He risked forgoing publication of the Hobbit in German to avoid giving credence to the "race-doctrine". The publisher wanted him to pledge that he had no Jewish ancestry. In Tolkien's words, "I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine."
You're right; that's an outrageous name. But a quick googling suggests he's legit.
There's good beer to the south too.
Life is hard here in the US in 2003; open your eyes people! I know of children in this "land of opportunity" who are scraping by without even the benefit of a current generation game console!
What we need is a return to the hunter/gatherer economy. The ONLY economic system that has ever ensured full employment.
You can see just how bad off you really are at www.globalrichlist.com.
---
I benefit from being able to buy German beer, Japanense video games, French cheese, Canadian video cards, Turkish tobacco... Shouldn't people produce and sell what they can do best? If Indians (or Romanians) are efficient at producting software, more power to them. The economist Thomas Sowell does a good job of explaining why different countries are good at different things.
I remember some years back when there was a local uproar about a Home Depot being built in Auburn, California. The big complaint was that Home Depot is a Georgia based company. Folks didn't want their California dollars going out of state to those Georgians all the way on the other side of the US. The cost of living is cheaper in Georgia. Buying things from Georgians is a "race to the bottom". Only buy things made in your own state... no, your own town... no, only things you make yourself!
---
"If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." - Milton Friedman
Oh, and have you heard about the oil companies covering up the invention of water-powered cars?
The truth about the GM transit conspiracy is boring and has nothing to do with cars. What GM actually did was conspire to have GM transit companies buy only GM-made buses. It's an antitrust issue, but not at all what the myth makes it out to be.
An instructive comparison might be the tariffs Intel wanted on cheap RAM from Asia.
Cheaper RAM hurt Intel in the short term - Intel accused foreign competitors of "dumping". But in the long term, cheap RAM made the tech industry grow. We wouldn't have 128MB video cards today if Intel had successfully lobbied to use tariffs to stiffle competition back then.
---
"Most of the statutes, or acts, edicts, and placards of parliaments, and states for regulating and directing of trade have been either political blunders or obtained by artful men for private advantage under pretence of public good." -Benjamin Franklin,
Hi, Dave! I was wondering if you are going to write an autobiography. If so, you should call it "I Am Not Making This Up".
My company has 35 Thinkpad 600s. These laptops have been great, and they have not had any unusual battery problems.
Another good cook book for beginner's is Elaine Corn's "Now You're Cooking". It has the basic information that a beginner needs to get comfortable with the essentials of cooking. It's very user friendly and has lots of good tips that would take a novice a lot of trial and error to learn otherwise.
To paraphrase P.J. O'Roarke, its not like the economy is a pizza and if I have too many slices you're left with just the box. If economics were a zero-sum game like that, then more immigrants would mean less jobs. Since, in fact, immigrants must spend their money on services and products made by natives, they create as many jobs as they fill.
Stephen Moore at the Cato Institute did an interesting study about the H1-B issue:
"...every additional high-tech worker brings to the United States about $110,000 of free human capital. An additional 50,000 H1-b immigrant visas is the equivalent of a $5.5 billion transfer of wealth from the citizens of foreign countries to the citizens of the United States. High-tech immigration is like reverse foreign aid."
This issue isn't unique to modern times or the computer industry. A patent lawyer named George Selden used a vague patent to force people who built cars in the 1800's to pay a licensing fee. It wasn't until Henry Ford challenged that patent in 1903 that the auto industry took off.
The bet you're refering to was canceled. South and Simon had agreed to nullify the bet if government price controls on timber were imposed.
When logging regulation and timber import restrictions from Canada artificially inflated the cost of timber, the particular issue that they were betting on became moot.
When government regulation increases the price of a commodity, it isn't the same issue as whether Earth's resources are being depleted. Sugar prices are much higher in the US than they need to be because of regulation, but that doesn't mean Earth is being depleted of sugar canes.