Your thought is correct in that bored people can get up to mischief if their energy is not directed towards something constructive or at least not destructive. This is a problem with people not knowing how to spend their time in a way that benefits or at least does not harm their own society, not necessarily the concept of UBI. The problem will be more prevalent with UBI, but so will other problems and some problems will disappear.
UBI's winning case is right here with the current practice of the benefits of increase efficiencies and increased profits being hoarded at the top. This will continue until forced redistribution of wealth is put into place. It is already in place in the form of taxes (to some degree), but as pointed out in many threads, taxes can be gamed and if not outright rigged or eliminated, so that those that are benefiting the most from a civilized nation and productive populace are those paying the least to maintain it. Something else will need to be put into place else the balance will skew and we will end up on a scale that teeters to one extreme then the other... never finding a good balance.
Forgive me if the parent post mentions this as I only got part way through, but the first few lines caught my attention.
We should NOT reduce the cost of labour, if anything labour costs should be a higher portion of the cost of a product. I realize that foreign workers make this impossible because they will work for cheaper if they are coming from a developing country, but at the same time, developed nations have to realize that their citizens needs to earn enough to afford their lifestyles, otherwise their populace is kept down through depressed salaries. If the cost of living in the USA, which I would term as a person able to afford the basics AND a certain level of opportunity/mobility to achieve more, requires higher labour rates then maybe that is what needs to happen.
Obviously you cannot stop immigration and putting tariffs on everything is not the best solution. Perhaps governments should start penalizing companies that import items assembled by workers not being paid an adequate wage by US standards. Essentially the US saying 'if you as a company want to sell a product to an American you need to treat your employees as American's'. It would promote worker's rights, probably keep jobs in America, and help keep wages at appropriate levels. It would also raise prices of goods, but with that comes better wages, perhaps better spending habits, and perhaps more home grown solutions to manufacture or source goods from inside the US.
You cannot get away from an endless supply of cheaper labour, so instead, implement policies that ensure companies cannot create a 'slave class' by preying on developing economies.
Industrialized society has thrived over the past 150 years, not all have benefited from it.
Why are you using the premise that 'industrialized societies thriving' means that they should not be blamed for the increase in pollution. Usually if one area of society thrives another area does not do so well. This does not always hold true, but in many instances it does. Then there are the arguments of what 'thriving' really is... You seem to be tossing out soundbites instead of establishing any real critiques, similar to politicians that come back to a reasonable argument with 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN' and then leave it at that...
We have not had Chip and Pin for too long, just about a decade I think. Along with Chip and Pin came the contact-less system that was limited to a certain amount of dollars per transaction. Of course that is some form of security, the contact-less (or 'tap') method is also used with gift cards, but up until a year or two ago most of the readers and in fact the chips on the cards themselves would be faulty after some use.
I know my first chip and pin card did not work with contact-less, but then when it did it only worked for about a year until it stopped (not sure if it was the chip or the reader), now with a new card its working again, but I know if you have an older reader you most likely have to go back to the chip and pin method.
I went to the states for skiing last winter and found it interesting that I hesitated when the waiter/ess asked for the credit card to bring it to the machine and swipe it. It has been so long since the vendor has had to take my credit card away from my sitelines that it just felt differently, even though I was used to it in Canada up until the mid 2000's.
It is telling... it is telling us that a 'free market' for health care does not work, else you would have the Walmart of health care. The problem is that people can do without brand name TV or clothes, but they have a natural inclination to spend as much as needed to get the best health care out there, due to the fear that cheaper might mean death or a lasting issue.
A standard of living is not something solely provided by 'free market capitalism', it is provided by the society and what they are willing to put into it. Find a way to bring everyone up and you raise your standard of living... but if you leave it as 50% move down, 50% move up, then you don't raise your standard of living.
The pre-ACA health care, in comparison with other parts of the world, was not helping you improve your standard of living as much as your peers... it was actually a drag on your standard of living because other factors were pushing it up and health care could not assist in that. So while everyone insists they get theirs they lose sight on the fact that if they just started at a good spot and standard, everyone would already have 'theirs' and there would be no need for some to have better health care than others due to affordability.
I don't think anyone won in 1812, besides victories and losses on both sides, no borders changed, ambitions on both sides were squashed, lots of people died, nothing changed.
This might be an example of a larger trend for countries with a downward trend in immigration and unsustainable birth rates (ie. less than replacement rate), country vs country, or society vs society to attract talent, ideas instead of just businesses will be the new future.
The race to the bottom for corporate taxes did not accomplish lasting benefits to the societies, now countries want the people which is always where the lasting benefits were.
Imagine, for those mobile enough, to have the options of what country you would like to live, educate, work, raise a family in laid out in front of you. I imagine many countries in Europe would be up there near the top of the list. A main reason to stay where you are is familiarity, family, friends, existing work history and contacts, but in the future where connections can cross the world, the countries depending on a person's roots to stay in the country and not attracting new talent will eventually fall down the ladder.
The main gain with automated cars, even with a gradual adoption rate of say 10 years, are cities with traffic. Productive time will shoot up when people can work while being driven to work, traffic will be lessened, optimal driving habits can lower fuel usage. The areas where we will spend less money would be fuel, possibly insurance, and car maintenance.
This saved money doesn't just disappear, it will go into other areas of the economy that might have a better impact. After all, if you spend $2000/yr on fuel for one car, cutting that in half due to ride sharing or 3/4 due to more efficient driving will allow you to spend it on a vacation, clothes, entertainment, industries that are seeing falling revenue due to less expendable money.
I watch roughly the same amount of hours of TV shows/week and go out to see the same amount of movies/year (around 5-7?). The change was I switched from downloading TV shows after they have aired to PVR'ing every series I might want to watch. No more movies are watched, if anything I watch less if I download less. I changed to the PVR instead of downloading because I was worried about exposure to those legal notices and I am too lazy to do a vpn, though I would if I had to cancel my cable
The bottom line is I do not have any extra money for more content through 'legal' means.
I am capped out on entertainment spending and its getting less and less by the year if not month.
If I have extra dollars they will go to new sports equipment, a dinner out, extra food to have friends over...
We DO NOT have any more money to give them, if anything there is less, so they can cut their prices by 10%, I still might cut the cord. These services are the first to be cut in the budget, not the last.
Regardless of where minimum wage goes or does not go. Labour needs to be valued higher. Over the last few decades we have increased in efficiencies so that we need less labour to produce more, though we have not increased what we value labour at. So we have been able to produce more, from less (both labour and materials), but that trade off has not helped increase labour costs.
A re-balancing needs to happen where we value labour more than we do other costs of business, then maybe everything might slowly shift back into focus where Walmart employes can afford to shop at Walmart for the goods that cost very little to make in the first place.
It would be interesting to see the ratio of labour costs vs material costs it took to produce various types of objects in the past vs now... I realize its hard to compare on a quality perspective as many items we use day to day are much more productive than those in the past due to invention/inovation, but I'm sure there are some examples and I would think the ratio has moved towards more cost on the materials and less on labour than they did in the past.
I agree with this, I would have also pointed out that the 'poor productivity spending' mechanisms that the poor have are now surpassed in harm by the ones the rich have, such as certain 'financial services' which do nothing for providing productivity. The ones with a lot of money used to have to cycle that money back into the economy in order to get more money out, thus splitting the gains between themselves and the people they employed/companies they invested in... more and more there is less of a 'split'.
It could be, just guessing, that the labor is getting the $15/hr job instead of the $10/hr job, or at least there is competition for the higher paying wage and the lower offering is not getting any applicants.
You mentioned 'in the suburb', so I figure its from somewhere close by Seattle?
No. There has to be a need before you get production. The need comes from customers, what customers can pay influences the prices of goods, what they pay is what they have in their pocket, what they have in their pocket is influenced by what they get paid.
It is a circle, but the driving factor is a need from a customer for a product, not the fact that a product has been produced. Customers have less need for non-essentials when they do not have the money to spend on them, then less money is there to pay the customer and its a downward spiral.
You can produce all the art you want, but if there is no need for the product and no expendable cash to buy the product then you will not be a 'job creator' no matter how much you produce or how efficiency (re: how little you pay your employees) you produce it.
If all the minimum wage jobs are taken by people out of school, then that is a good situation... it means lower unemployment with adults. What will happen though is you will have the same amount of jobs available for kids once a certain portion of adults go back to work. If LA loses any jobs due to wage increase and stores not able to compete, that is a different story and something businesses in the area are going to have to adapt to, but I think they will be able to as there is still going to be demand, if not more, for shops in the area... that wont stop.
What you have is a few educated and tech savvy people making comments trying to stimulate discussion, but a selection of not-so-educated and/or not-so-tech-savvy population with a voice misinterpreting their comments to be phobic. Unfortunately, most will believe the media hype and not worry about the discussion, including politicians. Its like an echo chamber where the wrong points gets magnified, modern day media.
I'm not going to say anything for or against this new connection USB-C, but if I were you I would look into the abuse your systems are taking, specifically while plugged into a charger... it seems all your power connections are being stressed to breaking, maybe charge in stationary positions and then take it off charger if you need to move around?
No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
The existing rules on phone usage limits, home connection usage limits, are fine and will stay... what they cannot do in the new rules is discriminate the type of traffic based on where it is coming from or going to.
"one-fize-fits-all rules" are exactly what is needed. These ISP's are the gateway to internet content, that content being whatever YOU decide it is, not THEM. Their job is to provide a road/pipe/path/wire/way for you to connect to the system, thats it, thats all, nothing further... The way they maintain that connection and how much you are allowed to use it, is between you and them, but WHAT you get should not be policed, monitored, prioritized, or discriminated against. This is what Network Neutrality is meant to do.
Plus your current system, without attempts to change, will slowly devolve into the ISP's being gatekeepers to your information where they can take money from both ends, at their discretion, with no benefit to the consumer in the end.
So to summarize: I think the facts are not on your side in this matter but it of course all depends on whether you think that the government's job is to prioritize the wealth of the nation or the happiness and well being of the entire populace.
This -> The Government providing for and emphasizing the needs of the few over the needs of the many -- , is part of the downfall of American politics. Other countries have tried to limit this shift and some to take it out almost all together, but these few have their claws in really deep and it will take generations to claw their society back from the idealism's of the few.
Just for future reference... is there somewhere to get a price list on each piece of legislation. Just so we know how much they are spending every time we shoot something down (or forget to and it gets through)...
In Canada here they do the same thing so it would really be nice to have this posted. Like a pricing spreadsheet, making sure it lists the price of each elected (and non-elected) publish official, and the legal processes.
You forget that the search for extra terrestrial life is backed by one scientific basis.. Humans
We are here, we exist, we are proof that life is possible and so the search for it elsewhere in this universe has us as a template. The more we understand how we work and what circumstances allow for us to live helps us in the search for extra terrestrial life.
The belief in God or whether (s)he created us is not relevant... unless you believe that (s)he created us and only us, but it is still irrelevant in terms of scientific process as there is no testable proof (yet).
There are infinite ways to create 'barriers to entry' that do not involve government as all they are are 'issues' created by an already established player to hinder existing and/or new players in the market. Type of product (network infrastructure, mining/resource harvesting), trade secrets (do patents and/or copyrights apply to 'free markets?), etc.. Free Market as an ideal is a goal that will never be fully realized as much as 'Total Control' cannot be realized. We have to live in the grey area between all extremes and as such we need to way the pro's and con's and be ever vigilant as a voting populace to the always evolving ways of certain groups of people to try to corrupt and control for their own benefits vs the people's benefits.
Saying the DMCA takedown process is broken is certainly true. This was known by those against the system from the start, but was inevitably only going to rear its head when those that are not major content providers (aka. those with money) started to game the system...
This is all a distraction though as the argument that preceeds this whole DMCA thing is the business models that depend on artificial scarcity of digital goods, the idea that people need to pay for every little idea (sound clip, article, presentation, graphic, video) that moves around the internet. This is an outdated thought and I am not sure what will evolve out of our new age of digitizing everything, but I certainly hope we do not hinder progress (well much beyond what we have done already) due to our inability to conceive of new business models and ways of reshaping our society to embrace the advantages of digital content.
Your analogies do not really work and though I do agree with your last point of "the people who develop it see dollar signs", but that type of over pricing or 'premium' pricing for a new service/type of product should only last until competitors get moving and the so-called 'free market' brings the price down to a balance of cost vs desired profit, where the profit takes the most hit the more competition there is.
The problem here is that digital books are not new and the cost to produce them has (mostly) totally different dependencies than a paper book. This means the cost factor of 'cost + profit' is not comparable to a paper book and instead what we see here is there is no real reflection of what the real cost is on an ebook because the people setting the prices no longer have too much of a cost. Sure there is still all the work that needs to be done to prepare a book and get it in its final format, but after that -> Replication, Advertising, Distribution, when in reference to ebooks is very low cost, advertising taking up the most if its done aggressively, but even then, when only considering electronic advertising over the internet, its not too much.
The middle man that used to take care of the physical replication, distribution, and advertisement surrounding a polished product are finding their business models continually eroded by the continually increasing ability of information to get to anyone anywhere for very little to no cost at all. This leads to new electronic media not being subject to the 'free market' because the first and largest players are usually these old companies that want to maintain price points that not only help to justify their existence, but allow them to stay so large of a company... otherwise they would have to cut profits and realize they need 1/10th the staff to satisfy electronic products and the barrier to entry for distributing those products is also significantly lower than what it was for the physical versions of the equivalent product.
Bottom line is emedia prices do not reflect real cost and competition, whether you attribute this to monopolies, price fixing, corporations buying out government, you get the same result and its all for the same reasons... They want to get their $$ and get out before the fall, so they will hold up the walls of their money making houses as long as possible.
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Your thought is correct in that bored people can get up to mischief if their energy is not directed towards something constructive or at least not destructive. This is a problem with people not knowing how to spend their time in a way that benefits or at least does not harm their own society, not necessarily the concept of UBI. The problem will be more prevalent with UBI, but so will other problems and some problems will disappear.
UBI's winning case is right here with the current practice of the benefits of increase efficiencies and increased profits being hoarded at the top. This will continue until forced redistribution of wealth is put into place. It is already in place in the form of taxes (to some degree), but as pointed out in many threads, taxes can be gamed and if not outright rigged or eliminated, so that those that are benefiting the most from a civilized nation and productive populace are those paying the least to maintain it. Something else will need to be put into place else the balance will skew and we will end up on a scale that teeters to one extreme then the other... never finding a good balance.
Forgive me if the parent post mentions this as I only got part way through, but the first few lines caught my attention.
We should NOT reduce the cost of labour, if anything labour costs should be a higher portion of the cost of a product. I realize that foreign workers make this impossible because they will work for cheaper if they are coming from a developing country, but at the same time, developed nations have to realize that their citizens needs to earn enough to afford their lifestyles, otherwise their populace is kept down through depressed salaries. If the cost of living in the USA, which I would term as a person able to afford the basics AND a certain level of opportunity/mobility to achieve more, requires higher labour rates then maybe that is what needs to happen.
Obviously you cannot stop immigration and putting tariffs on everything is not the best solution. Perhaps governments should start penalizing companies that import items assembled by workers not being paid an adequate wage by US standards. Essentially the US saying 'if you as a company want to sell a product to an American you need to treat your employees as American's'. It would promote worker's rights, probably keep jobs in America, and help keep wages at appropriate levels. It would also raise prices of goods, but with that comes better wages, perhaps better spending habits, and perhaps more home grown solutions to manufacture or source goods from inside the US.
You cannot get away from an endless supply of cheaper labour, so instead, implement policies that ensure companies cannot create a 'slave class' by preying on developing economies.
Correction:
Industrialized society has thrived over the past 150 years, not all have benefited from it.
Why are you using the premise that 'industrialized societies thriving' means that they should not be blamed for the increase in pollution. Usually if one area of society thrives another area does not do so well. This does not always hold true, but in many instances it does. Then there are the arguments of what 'thriving' really is... You seem to be tossing out soundbites instead of establishing any real critiques, similar to politicians that come back to a reasonable argument with 'THINK OF THE CHILDREN' and then leave it at that...
Canadian here:
We have not had Chip and Pin for too long, just about a decade I think. Along with Chip and Pin came the contact-less system that was limited to a certain amount of dollars per transaction. Of course that is some form of security, the contact-less (or 'tap') method is also used with gift cards, but up until a year or two ago most of the readers and in fact the chips on the cards themselves would be faulty after some use.
I know my first chip and pin card did not work with contact-less, but then when it did it only worked for about a year until it stopped (not sure if it was the chip or the reader), now with a new card its working again, but I know if you have an older reader you most likely have to go back to the chip and pin method.
I went to the states for skiing last winter and found it interesting that I hesitated when the waiter/ess asked for the credit card to bring it to the machine and swipe it. It has been so long since the vendor has had to take my credit card away from my sitelines that it just felt differently, even though I was used to it in Canada up until the mid 2000's.
It is telling... it is telling us that a 'free market' for health care does not work, else you would have the Walmart of health care. The problem is that people can do without brand name TV or clothes, but they have a natural inclination to spend as much as needed to get the best health care out there, due to the fear that cheaper might mean death or a lasting issue.
A standard of living is not something solely provided by 'free market capitalism', it is provided by the society and what they are willing to put into it. Find a way to bring everyone up and you raise your standard of living... but if you leave it as 50% move down, 50% move up, then you don't raise your standard of living.
The pre-ACA health care, in comparison with other parts of the world, was not helping you improve your standard of living as much as your peers... it was actually a drag on your standard of living because other factors were pushing it up and health care could not assist in that. So while everyone insists they get theirs they lose sight on the fact that if they just started at a good spot and standard, everyone would already have 'theirs' and there would be no need for some to have better health care than others due to affordability.
I don't think anyone won in 1812, besides victories and losses on both sides, no borders changed, ambitions on both sides were squashed, lots of people died, nothing changed.
This might be an example of a larger trend for countries with a downward trend in immigration and unsustainable birth rates (ie. less than replacement rate), country vs country, or society vs society to attract talent, ideas instead of just businesses will be the new future.
The race to the bottom for corporate taxes did not accomplish lasting benefits to the societies, now countries want the people which is always where the lasting benefits were.
Imagine, for those mobile enough, to have the options of what country you would like to live, educate, work, raise a family in laid out in front of you. I imagine many countries in Europe would be up there near the top of the list. A main reason to stay where you are is familiarity, family, friends, existing work history and contacts, but in the future where connections can cross the world, the countries depending on a person's roots to stay in the country and not attracting new talent will eventually fall down the ladder.
The main gain with automated cars, even with a gradual adoption rate of say 10 years, are cities with traffic. Productive time will shoot up when people can work while being driven to work, traffic will be lessened, optimal driving habits can lower fuel usage. The areas where we will spend less money would be fuel, possibly insurance, and car maintenance.
This saved money doesn't just disappear, it will go into other areas of the economy that might have a better impact. After all, if you spend $2000/yr on fuel for one car, cutting that in half due to ride sharing or 3/4 due to more efficient driving will allow you to spend it on a vacation, clothes, entertainment, industries that are seeing falling revenue due to less expendable money.
I watch roughly the same amount of hours of TV shows/week and go out to see the same amount of movies/year (around 5-7?). The change was I switched from downloading TV shows after they have aired to PVR'ing every series I might want to watch. No more movies are watched, if anything I watch less if I download less. I changed to the PVR instead of downloading because I was worried about exposure to those legal notices and I am too lazy to do a vpn, though I would if I had to cancel my cable
The bottom line is I do not have any extra money for more content through 'legal' means.
I am capped out on entertainment spending and its getting less and less by the year if not month.
If I have extra dollars they will go to new sports equipment, a dinner out, extra food to have friends over...
We DO NOT have any more money to give them, if anything there is less, so they can cut their prices by 10%, I still might cut the cord. These services are the first to be cut in the budget, not the last.
Regardless of where minimum wage goes or does not go. Labour needs to be valued higher. Over the last few decades we have increased in efficiencies so that we need less labour to produce more, though we have not increased what we value labour at. So we have been able to produce more, from less (both labour and materials), but that trade off has not helped increase labour costs.
A re-balancing needs to happen where we value labour more than we do other costs of business, then maybe everything might slowly shift back into focus where Walmart employes can afford to shop at Walmart for the goods that cost very little to make in the first place.
It would be interesting to see the ratio of labour costs vs material costs it took to produce various types of objects in the past vs now... I realize its hard to compare on a quality perspective as many items we use day to day are much more productive than those in the past due to invention/inovation, but I'm sure there are some examples and I would think the ratio has moved towards more cost on the materials and less on labour than they did in the past.
I agree with this, I would have also pointed out that the 'poor productivity spending' mechanisms that the poor have are now surpassed in harm by the ones the rich have, such as certain 'financial services' which do nothing for providing productivity. The ones with a lot of money used to have to cycle that money back into the economy in order to get more money out, thus splitting the gains between themselves and the people they employed/companies they invested in... more and more there is less of a 'split'.
It could be, just guessing, that the labor is getting the $15/hr job instead of the $10/hr job, or at least there is competition for the higher paying wage and the lower offering is not getting any applicants.
You mentioned 'in the suburb', so I figure its from somewhere close by Seattle?
No. There has to be a need before you get production. The need comes from customers, what customers can pay influences the prices of goods, what they pay is what they have in their pocket, what they have in their pocket is influenced by what they get paid.
It is a circle, but the driving factor is a need from a customer for a product, not the fact that a product has been produced. Customers have less need for non-essentials when they do not have the money to spend on them, then less money is there to pay the customer and its a downward spiral.
You can produce all the art you want, but if there is no need for the product and no expendable cash to buy the product then you will not be a 'job creator' no matter how much you produce or how efficiency (re: how little you pay your employees) you produce it.
If all the minimum wage jobs are taken by people out of school, then that is a good situation... it means lower unemployment with adults. What will happen though is you will have the same amount of jobs available for kids once a certain portion of adults go back to work. If LA loses any jobs due to wage increase and stores not able to compete, that is a different story and something businesses in the area are going to have to adapt to, but I think they will be able to as there is still going to be demand, if not more, for shops in the area... that wont stop.
What you have is a few educated and tech savvy people making comments trying to stimulate discussion, but a selection of not-so-educated and/or not-so-tech-savvy population with a voice misinterpreting their comments to be phobic. Unfortunately, most will believe the media hype and not worry about the discussion, including politicians. Its like an echo chamber where the wrong points gets magnified, modern day media.
I'm not going to say anything for or against this new connection USB-C, but if I were you I would look into the abuse your systems are taking, specifically while plugged into a charger... it seems all your power connections are being stressed to breaking, maybe charge in stationary positions and then take it off charger if you need to move around?
No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
The existing rules on phone usage limits, home connection usage limits, are fine and will stay... what they cannot do in the new rules is discriminate the type of traffic based on where it is coming from or going to.
"one-fize-fits-all rules" are exactly what is needed. These ISP's are the gateway to internet content, that content being whatever YOU decide it is, not THEM. Their job is to provide a road/pipe/path/wire/way for you to connect to the system, thats it, thats all, nothing further... The way they maintain that connection and how much you are allowed to use it, is between you and them, but WHAT you get should not be policed, monitored, prioritized, or discriminated against. This is what Network Neutrality is meant to do.
Plus your current system, without attempts to change, will slowly devolve into the ISP's being gatekeepers to your information where they can take money from both ends, at their discretion, with no benefit to the consumer in the end.
So to summarize: I think the facts are not on your side in this matter but it of course all depends on whether you think that the government's job is to prioritize the wealth of the nation or the happiness and well being of the entire populace.
This -> The Government providing for and emphasizing the needs of the few over the needs of the many -- , is part of the downfall of American politics. Other countries have tried to limit this shift and some to take it out almost all together, but these few have their claws in really deep and it will take generations to claw their society back from the idealism's of the few.
Just for future reference... is there somewhere to get a price list on each piece of legislation. Just so we know how much they are spending every time we shoot something down (or forget to and it gets through)...
In Canada here they do the same thing so it would really be nice to have this posted. Like a pricing spreadsheet, making sure it lists the price of each elected (and non-elected) publish official, and the legal processes.
Just for reference...
You forget that the search for extra terrestrial life is backed by one scientific basis.. Humans
We are here, we exist, we are proof that life is possible and so the search for it elsewhere in this universe has us as a template. The more we understand how we work and what circumstances allow for us to live helps us in the search for extra terrestrial life.
The belief in God or whether (s)he created us is not relevant... unless you believe that (s)he created us and only us, but it is still irrelevant in terms of scientific process as there is no testable proof (yet).
Two separate arguments
There are infinite ways to create 'barriers to entry' that do not involve government as all they are are 'issues' created by an already established player to hinder existing and/or new players in the market. Type of product (network infrastructure, mining/resource harvesting), trade secrets (do patents and/or copyrights apply to 'free markets?), etc.. Free Market as an ideal is a goal that will never be fully realized as much as 'Total Control' cannot be realized. We have to live in the grey area between all extremes and as such we need to way the pro's and con's and be ever vigilant as a voting populace to the always evolving ways of certain groups of people to try to corrupt and control for their own benefits vs the people's benefits.
Saying the DMCA takedown process is broken is certainly true. This was known by those against the system from the start, but was inevitably only going to rear its head when those that are not major content providers (aka. those with money) started to game the system... This is all a distraction though as the argument that preceeds this whole DMCA thing is the business models that depend on artificial scarcity of digital goods, the idea that people need to pay for every little idea (sound clip, article, presentation, graphic, video) that moves around the internet. This is an outdated thought and I am not sure what will evolve out of our new age of digitizing everything, but I certainly hope we do not hinder progress (well much beyond what we have done already) due to our inability to conceive of new business models and ways of reshaping our society to embrace the advantages of digital content.
Your analogies do not really work and though I do agree with your last point of "the people who develop it see dollar signs", but that type of over pricing or 'premium' pricing for a new service/type of product should only last until competitors get moving and the so-called 'free market' brings the price down to a balance of cost vs desired profit, where the profit takes the most hit the more competition there is. The problem here is that digital books are not new and the cost to produce them has (mostly) totally different dependencies than a paper book. This means the cost factor of 'cost + profit' is not comparable to a paper book and instead what we see here is there is no real reflection of what the real cost is on an ebook because the people setting the prices no longer have too much of a cost. Sure there is still all the work that needs to be done to prepare a book and get it in its final format, but after that -> Replication, Advertising, Distribution, when in reference to ebooks is very low cost, advertising taking up the most if its done aggressively, but even then, when only considering electronic advertising over the internet, its not too much. The middle man that used to take care of the physical replication, distribution, and advertisement surrounding a polished product are finding their business models continually eroded by the continually increasing ability of information to get to anyone anywhere for very little to no cost at all. This leads to new electronic media not being subject to the 'free market' because the first and largest players are usually these old companies that want to maintain price points that not only help to justify their existence, but allow them to stay so large of a company... otherwise they would have to cut profits and realize they need 1/10th the staff to satisfy electronic products and the barrier to entry for distributing those products is also significantly lower than what it was for the physical versions of the equivalent product. Bottom line is emedia prices do not reflect real cost and competition, whether you attribute this to monopolies, price fixing, corporations buying out government, you get the same result and its all for the same reasons... They want to get their $$ and get out before the fall, so they will hold up the walls of their money making houses as long as possible.