Drunk driving laws are wrong in principle and are at best a necessary evil. Hopefully technology will one day replace drunk driving laws. Like you can drive your car drunk, but it's aware of when you're going to cause an accident and prevents it.
You could use your same line of reasoning as an argument for prohibition. Hey if you're drunk you make poor decisions. If you're drunk you may go out in your car because you don't realize at the time that you're taking a big risk, even though when you're sober you would never dream of driving drunk. So you shouldn't be allowed to drink to begin with! Prohibition, for the children!
We have laws against drunk driving because it's a serious problem that requires a one-off, compromise solution, not as a general principle against irresponsible behavior that affects others. ALL your irresponsible behavior affects others, right? For instance, moving away from drinking, do you want to make it illegal to stop paying your mortgage because once a neighborhood loses "herd immunity" to foreclosures it begins dramatically lowering property values even for healthy homes?
In mathematics, Mr Bezos, this analysis is known as the pigeonhole principle, which in layman's terms says you can't ethically pay tax nofuckingwhere on $74b dollars in revenue.
And FYI, companies pay taxes on profits, not revenue, so that $74b figure is not very useful unless you want to underscore how thin Amazon's margins are?
Amazon has a very real monopoly on print and electronic books.
Monopoly doesn't just refer to market share, but control of a market. No company can control the ebook market, the barriers to entry are too low.
Computers and the Internet have made the following things easier than they've ever been: * Advertising your own skills * Finding people with skills * Communicating and collaborating with others * Distributing electronic material
I don't see a future where editors, authors, web designers, programmers, web hosts, credit card processors, banks, investors, and consumers will be unable to find each other without Amazon being in the middle.
How is Amazon is ever going to be secure enough in their monopoly that they'll start getting fat margins off of work that millions of people in the world can replicate at low cost?
No, that's not the Amazon plan. In fact, they are trying to drive publishers out of business and force authors to deal directly with them, as the only choice.
Amazon can only maintain their de facto monopoly as long as they attract consumers *and producers* by providing good service at a reasonable price.
Or did you think it's really really tough to distribute ebooks, so authors have no choice but Amazon?
Actually, it can be a rational economic argument. When my tax dollars are used to subsidize their employee's basic needs
The argument you're putting forward applies to all low-skill American workers, not just Walmart's.
it becomes in my rational self-interest to figure out why, even with Wal-Mart's economies of scale and state-of-the-art distribution system, their own employees must get food stamps and housing assistance.
I'll tell you -- because they don't get paid a lot. But it has nothing to do with their economies of scale and state of the art distribution system. Mom and pop shops also pay employees minimum wage and give them no benefits.
Yes, Walmart could raise prices and pay employees more. And mom and pop shops could do the same thing.
What you posted is not an elaboration on why "they are not" though. Those additional words could be said about any business and any product... it's pretty much describing "advertising."
If they can take someone elses rights away, they can take yours away to. It's as simple as that.
They can take away the rights of people whom the public despises. Right now it's largely Muslim terrorists and pedophiles.
That does not mean Obama could say "Hey, guess what, from now on you can kill Protestants with no penalty, because the Catholic Church is the one true church!" and get away with it.
The free government backed insurance is literally priceless, as no commercial insurer would ever offer it.
The meat of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act is the indemnity, not the insurance subsidy. No commercial insurer can offer legal indemnity, that's why they aren't involved.
Considering nuclear plant operators are responsible for accidents that aren't even their fault (e.g. terrorist attack), it seems like a pretty fair compromise. And calling it a subsidy doesn't really make sense.. you have no dollar figure to compare it to, as you pointed out, so you have no idea how big the subsidy is. We'll have to wait until money is actually paid out by the government to call it a subsidy.
Saying they need to learn math and logic to prepare for CS is not an argument AGAINST it. Sometimes if you give kids a goal, they are more motivated to learn the prerequisites. Who knows if it would work, but it seems reasonable.
if women aren't helping to develop new technology, then we're probably missing something important.
So your argument is that women bring something different than men. Well what if what they bring is not important or is actually detrimental somehow, and that's why they are underrepresented?
I mean, if you're arguing from the stance that men and women are that different, then you have to admit both possibilities.
Calling someone you don't know a "hypocritical asshat" out of nowhere is most definitely trolling.
It's rude but it's not trolling, which in my book has a more specific meaning than "being rude online." Also that person did not directly call someone in this thread a hypocritical asshat.. it was part of a hypothetical. IF x AND !y THEN you are a hypocritical asshat because x implies y. Whether you think the argument is fair depends on whether you think x truly implies y. I think he made a very strong case that it does.
So, you may believe that it's not the job of the corporation to give a shit about social or environmental issues, ok. But these same corporations *are* the ones saying that the government should stay out of their affairs,
1. Of course.. if you believe it's not your job to do X, then you will want the government to not force you to do X. Am I missing something? 2. You're not really addressing the so-called "troll" argument. His point was that if you believe a company has a moral duty to lose money (or not profit as much) so that they can help some local economy that they don't personally care about... then why do you not also have a duty to help some corporation that you don't care about? If you think it's a moral imperative to help people keep their jobs, which is what this thread was about (much more specific than general social/environmental issues), then how are YOU fulfilling that imperative? Are you supporting the crap companies that aren't competitive and are maybe pushing old, obsolete technology? People work for them too.
I guess you're being sarcastic, but "separate but equal" is absolutely fine. The Supreme Court was incorrect when they ruled that separate but equal was inherently unequal, whether in education or any other government service. For instance, last I checked, government buildings still have separate but equal bathrooms for men and women.
More seriously, gender-segregated education is being experimented with in public schools (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...). I don't see a reason why race-segregated education (or anything else) would be morally or legally worse. But of course it's seen as worse for some reason.
While you're probably correct in your interpretation of what "Don't like it? Don't use Facebook." refers to, there is the possibility that OP was referring to the "it is none of your damn business" part. In which case, his argument makes sense and does not go in favor of "these other nut bags" as you concluded.
if a company is systematically passing over people because they are (black, female, the wrong kind of christian, etc) - it's hard to do anything about it if they never release those stats.
Hmm I don't think so, not today anyway. Perhaps that was true a long time ago. The government already knows who works for (gets paid by) Facebook. It gets reported in W2s, 1099s, etc. They also ask your race/gender/other demographic markers on various government forms. Your driver's license and passport list some of them. So it would be pretty trivial for the government to get a good idea of it all without asking companies to keep or report their own stats.
It wouldn't necessarily give you finer grained details like how many minorities or women are in management, but you can surmise a lot of that from pay scale anyway.
For a company as big as google or facebook, that kind of thing could really put a damper in a qualified person's ability to find a job and feed their family.
No company is so big that it's a significant portion of the economy... at least in America.
Amalgamated Profits Inc. only underpays Group A by (0.9*X)%, so as a member of Group A boy am I glad to have a job here.
Correct, and thus a higher proportion of Group A members would work at AP Inc, and AP Inc would be happy to hire them. If they didn't hire members of Group A based on discriminatory hiring policy, that would be cutting into their bottom line.
Now you might be thinking that paying Group A less is itself a form of a discrimination, and it could be, but it's not provable given the limited information we have in this hypothetical. Group A may be willing to work for less for reasons that have nothing to do with the employer.
Any process can be made expensive if you try, which opponents of nuclear power are certainly doing. Nuclear has been made expensive in part by the ludicrous requirements for decommissioning. Decommissioning doesn't need to be expensive unless a nuclear plant was built in the middle of a city. They should not be built there.
Not only does it save money, but many shows are more enjoyable when you can watch an entire season at your leisure rather than waiting a minimum of a week between episodes. Most shows with season-long plot arcs fall into this category.
I'm not sure about that. Kansas City where they started is not a major metropolitcan area. Austin is. What seems to be the common thread is that local governments are willing to play ball to get it done.
Google is interested in the city I live in (Raleigh, NC), but also several of the smaller cities nearby, including Durham (pop: 240k), Cary (150k), and Chapel Hill (60k). One reason is that these cities (and a few more) got together and came up with their own plan to introduce gigabit internet, called the "North Carolina Next Generation Network" (ncngn.net). They made an agreement that to facilitate this network, they would provide for things like easy permitting once a project is approved and non-discriminatory leasing of city owned resources (e.g. http://www.bizjournals.com/tri...). They put out an RFP for the network before Google showed interest and had 8 respondents. AT&T is one of them, and they plan to roll out their "gigapower" thing, the same one they have in Austin. Time Warner is also participating, but hasn't released more details.
So I'm not 100% sure anymore whether these companies are cherry-picking or just chasing Google (since AT&T announced before Google expressed interest here, and in fact Google has not committed).
If you got a mild downhill, it's party! The car runs forever in neutral
From what I've heard, it's better to keep the car in gear while you're coasting. Modern engines can shut down fuel to the pistons if inertia is able to keep them going so you're literally using no fuel. If you put it into neutral it can't do that.
But your whole strategy of accelerating then coasting sounds suspect. Are you sure you're actually saving any fuel doing that? I would think the acceleration part outweighs the coasting part.
or they have another lane they can pass you, as such and idiot who can't drive, by. This whole livin on the edge of being annoying to others
What makes you think you're on the edge? There are people out there who feel uncomfortable passing at all even on a multilane highway because they are terrified of the fast lane. And passing something who is driving erratically can be stressful to lots of people. You're well past the boundary of what's annoying.
but you know better who the real idiot is - the guy honking his horns on the huge manly unaerodynamic pickup truck, the manliness image for which he has to pay for dearly at the pump.
Heh I have to wonder if you are attacking the image of manliness because the way you drive is so unmanly and you know that and can't do anything about it, so you attack the entire idea of manliness so that nobody can be better than you? Or is it that your way of driving is a type of secret manliness which is better than other types of manliness so you actually feel better than others but sad that people don't realize that?
The reason your example works out like that is the channels have equal costs, which is unrealistic.
Let's say channel 1 costs $80/subscriber and channel 2 costs $20. So the total is still $100 with 2 subscribers.
Now they unbundle. A, which likes channel 1, now pays $160/month. B pays only $40/month.
My example is taking advantage of the difference between popularity (50% each) and cost (80% vs 20%). Perhaps in real life, the channel which costs $20 would only get 20% of the subscribers, in which case they'd still have to pay $100. However, I suspect in real life there are many channels that have broad appeal and lower than average costs. For instance there are many channels more popular than ESPN that cost a lot less. For instance, according to http://www.mediabistro.com/tvn... last month TNT, USA, TBS, History Channel, and Fox News were more popular than ESPN. But according to http://allthingsd.com/20100308... the costs are: ESPN - $4.08 TNT - $0.99 Fox News - $0.58 USA - $0.55 TBS - $0.49 History - $0.22
HGTV, which is right after ESPN in April ratings, costs only $0.14.
So what would probably happen in the unbundled case is that enough people would subscribe to these channels that costs would approximately double. (I'm guessing this since I read that about 60% of the country watches ESPN, and these channels are about as popular). I would definitely pay $0.44/month for the History Channel because I like some of their shows (Pawn Stars, American Restoration, Vikings). At $1/month I might even pick up Fox News, and USA. I'm not sure about TNT and TBS. I would definitely not get ESPN.
Where the consumer gets screwed with a la carte pricing is the fixed costs of the cable company, into which I'm also categorizing current profit level (since cable companies aren't going to move to a la carte if it means less overall profit, regardless of margin).
Let's say today I pay $100/month for cable TV, of which $25 is fixed costs, $25 is profit, and $50 is content. The new model would be $25 for fixed costs, $25 for profit, and then whatever channels I want. So my minimum monthly bill is still $50 even for a single channel, which is ridiculous. Maybe I end up with 20 channels for $20/month, so my total bill is $70. I'm saving money, but only 30% for giving up 95% of the channels. And it would be sad because while I didn't pick up TNT, I would miss their showing of the Christmas Story or whatever in December. There would be a bunch of those lost opportunities, just to save $30. And the old system is no longer available to me, because buying all the channels would now cost $150 instead of $100.
But who knows, perhaps the cheap channels would be cheap enough that lots of people would subscribe even though they don't watch. When you're talking about channels costing $0.20/month or less, it's like "why not" except for channels you really, really don't have any interest in.
If the cable companies can pay fees to content providers based on subscribers to that channel and not total subscribers, then it's possible for the average bill to go down but the profit to stay the same or go up.
Let's say out of a $100 monthly cable bill, $25 goes to non-content costs, $50 goes to content, and $25 is profit. That suggests the minimum bill in an a la carte plan might be around $50, which would preserve the current profit level. Then the cable company can sell channels at cost plus and the new system would be more profitable than the current system even with a lower average bill.
The problem for consumers is you're not saving as much as you think since you still pay the fixed costs, plus the old profit level, plus a higher per-channel cost than you expect. But consumers could still save a bit of money. I wonder if it's worth it for the dramatic drop in variety though.
Slashdot Mirror
Drunk driving laws are wrong in principle and are at best a necessary evil. Hopefully technology will one day replace drunk driving laws. Like you can drive your car drunk, but it's aware of when you're going to cause an accident and prevents it.
You could use your same line of reasoning as an argument for prohibition. Hey if you're drunk you make poor decisions. If you're drunk you may go out in your car because you don't realize at the time that you're taking a big risk, even though when you're sober you would never dream of driving drunk. So you shouldn't be allowed to drink to begin with! Prohibition, for the children!
We have laws against drunk driving because it's a serious problem that requires a one-off, compromise solution, not as a general principle against irresponsible behavior that affects others. ALL your irresponsible behavior affects others, right? For instance, moving away from drinking, do you want to make it illegal to stop paying your mortgage because once a neighborhood loses "herd immunity" to foreclosures it begins dramatically lowering property values even for healthy homes?
In mathematics, Mr Bezos, this analysis is known as the pigeonhole principle, which in layman's terms says you can't ethically pay tax nofuckingwhere on $74b dollars in revenue.
Better check your research, Amazon does pay taxes: http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...
And FYI, companies pay taxes on profits, not revenue, so that $74b figure is not very useful unless you want to underscore how thin Amazon's margins are?
Amazon has a very real monopoly on print and electronic books.
Monopoly doesn't just refer to market share, but control of a market. No company can control the ebook market, the barriers to entry are too low.
Computers and the Internet have made the following things easier than they've ever been:
* Advertising your own skills
* Finding people with skills
* Communicating and collaborating with others
* Distributing electronic material
I don't see a future where editors, authors, web designers, programmers, web hosts, credit card processors, banks, investors, and consumers will be unable to find each other without Amazon being in the middle.
How is Amazon is ever going to be secure enough in their monopoly that they'll start getting fat margins off of work that millions of people in the world can replicate at low cost?
No, that's not the Amazon plan. In fact, they are trying to drive publishers out of business and force authors to deal directly with them, as the only choice.
Amazon can only maintain their de facto monopoly as long as they attract consumers *and producers* by providing good service at a reasonable price.
Or did you think it's really really tough to distribute ebooks, so authors have no choice but Amazon?
Actually, it can be a rational economic argument. When my tax dollars are used to subsidize their employee's basic needs
The argument you're putting forward applies to all low-skill American workers, not just Walmart's.
it becomes in my rational self-interest to figure out why, even with Wal-Mart's economies of scale and state-of-the-art distribution system, their own employees must get food stamps and housing assistance.
I'll tell you -- because they don't get paid a lot. But it has nothing to do with their economies of scale and state of the art distribution system. Mom and pop shops also pay employees minimum wage and give them no benefits.
Yes, Walmart could raise prices and pay employees more. And mom and pop shops could do the same thing.
So why the hate for Walmart?
What you posted is not an elaboration on why "they are not" though. Those additional words could be said about any business and any product... it's pretty much describing "advertising."
It's appalling to support your friend by saying "She was asking for it by behaving the way she did" (it's still rape)
Eh, that's not always true. There is such thing as body language.
She wanted it but then regretted it" (an increasing number of jurisdictions allow a person to withdraw consent after the fact).
Yeah right! hah
If they can take someone elses rights away, they can take yours away to. It's as simple as that.
They can take away the rights of people whom the public despises. Right now it's largely Muslim terrorists and pedophiles.
That does not mean Obama could say "Hey, guess what, from now on you can kill Protestants with no penalty, because the Catholic Church is the one true church!" and get away with it.
So no.. it's not as simple as that.
The free government backed insurance is literally priceless, as no commercial insurer would ever offer it.
The meat of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act is the indemnity, not the insurance subsidy. No commercial insurer can offer legal indemnity, that's why they aren't involved.
Considering nuclear plant operators are responsible for accidents that aren't even their fault (e.g. terrorist attack), it seems like a pretty fair compromise. And calling it a subsidy doesn't really make sense.. you have no dollar figure to compare it to, as you pointed out, so you have no idea how big the subsidy is. We'll have to wait until money is actually paid out by the government to call it a subsidy.
Why not allow the corporations to exploit this very interesting and profitable market? [/sarcasm]
You know that the market in enriching nuclear fuel, is umm rather tightly regulated?
That's why the feds would have to invest in that.
Saying they need to learn math and logic to prepare for CS is not an argument AGAINST it. Sometimes if you give kids a goal, they are more motivated to learn the prerequisites. Who knows if it would work, but it seems reasonable.
if women aren't helping to develop new technology, then we're probably missing something important.
So your argument is that women bring something different than men. Well what if what they bring is not important or is actually detrimental somehow, and that's why they are underrepresented?
I mean, if you're arguing from the stance that men and women are that different, then you have to admit both possibilities.
Calling someone you don't know a "hypocritical asshat" out of nowhere is most definitely trolling.
It's rude but it's not trolling, which in my book has a more specific meaning than "being rude online." Also that person did not directly call someone in this thread a hypocritical asshat.. it was part of a hypothetical. IF x AND !y THEN you are a hypocritical asshat because x implies y. Whether you think the argument is fair depends on whether you think x truly implies y. I think he made a very strong case that it does.
So, you may believe that it's not the job of the corporation to give a shit about social or environmental issues, ok. But these same corporations *are* the ones saying that the government should stay out of their affairs,
1. Of course.. if you believe it's not your job to do X, then you will want the government to not force you to do X. Am I missing something?
2. You're not really addressing the so-called "troll" argument. His point was that if you believe a company has a moral duty to lose money (or not profit as much) so that they can help some local economy that they don't personally care about... then why do you not also have a duty to help some corporation that you don't care about? If you think it's a moral imperative to help people keep their jobs, which is what this thread was about (much more specific than general social/environmental issues), then how are YOU fulfilling that imperative? Are you supporting the crap companies that aren't competitive and are maybe pushing old, obsolete technology? People work for them too.
It's sad that that guy got modded troll because of his name. His post is correct.
I guess you're being sarcastic, but "separate but equal" is absolutely fine. The Supreme Court was incorrect when they ruled that separate but equal was inherently unequal, whether in education or any other government service. For instance, last I checked, government buildings still have separate but equal bathrooms for men and women.
More seriously, gender-segregated education is being experimented with in public schools (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...). I don't see a reason why race-segregated education (or anything else) would be morally or legally worse. But of course it's seen as worse for some reason.
While you're probably correct in your interpretation of what "Don't like it? Don't use Facebook." refers to, there is the possibility that OP was referring to the "it is none of your damn business" part. In which case, his argument makes sense and does not go in favor of "these other nut bags" as you concluded.
if a company is systematically passing over people because they are (black, female, the wrong kind of christian, etc) - it's hard to do anything about it if they never release those stats.
Hmm I don't think so, not today anyway. Perhaps that was true a long time ago. The government already knows who works for (gets paid by) Facebook. It gets reported in W2s, 1099s, etc. They also ask your race/gender/other demographic markers on various government forms. Your driver's license and passport list some of them. So it would be pretty trivial for the government to get a good idea of it all without asking companies to keep or report their own stats.
It wouldn't necessarily give you finer grained details like how many minorities or women are in management, but you can surmise a lot of that from pay scale anyway.
For a company as big as google or facebook, that kind of thing could really put a damper in a qualified person's ability to find a job and feed their family.
No company is so big that it's a significant portion of the economy... at least in America.
Amalgamated Profits Inc. only underpays Group A by (0.9*X)%, so as a member of Group A boy am I glad to have a job here.
Correct, and thus a higher proportion of Group A members would work at AP Inc, and AP Inc would be happy to hire them. If they didn't hire members of Group A based on discriminatory hiring policy, that would be cutting into their bottom line.
Now you might be thinking that paying Group A less is itself a form of a discrimination, and it could be, but it's not provable given the limited information we have in this hypothetical. Group A may be willing to work for less for reasons that have nothing to do with the employer.
Any process can be made expensive if you try, which opponents of nuclear power are certainly doing. Nuclear has been made expensive in part by the ludicrous requirements for decommissioning. Decommissioning doesn't need to be expensive unless a nuclear plant was built in the middle of a city. They should not be built there.
Refining U-235 is quite expensive to fuel grade is quite expensive
Sure, to you and me, but to the industry fuel cost is a small percentage of the cost of nuclear energy. It's not expensive.
and quite toxic.
Yes, but at least it's concentrated. Nothing's perfect.
Not only does it save money, but many shows are more enjoyable when you can watch an entire season at your leisure rather than waiting a minimum of a week between episodes. Most shows with season-long plot arcs fall into this category.
I'm not sure about that. Kansas City where they started is not a major metropolitcan area. Austin is. What seems to be the common thread is that local governments are willing to play ball to get it done.
Google is interested in the city I live in (Raleigh, NC), but also several of the smaller cities nearby, including Durham (pop: 240k), Cary (150k), and Chapel Hill (60k). One reason is that these cities (and a few more) got together and came up with their own plan to introduce gigabit internet, called the "North Carolina Next Generation Network" (ncngn.net). They made an agreement that to facilitate this network, they would provide for things like easy permitting once a project is approved and non-discriminatory leasing of city owned resources (e.g. http://www.bizjournals.com/tri...). They put out an RFP for the network before Google showed interest and had 8 respondents. AT&T is one of them, and they plan to roll out their "gigapower" thing, the same one they have in Austin. Time Warner is also participating, but hasn't released more details.
So I'm not 100% sure anymore whether these companies are cherry-picking or just chasing Google (since AT&T announced before Google expressed interest here, and in fact Google has not committed).
If you got a mild downhill, it's party! The car runs forever in neutral
From what I've heard, it's better to keep the car in gear while you're coasting. Modern engines can shut down fuel to the pistons if inertia is able to keep them going so you're literally using no fuel. If you put it into neutral it can't do that.
But your whole strategy of accelerating then coasting sounds suspect. Are you sure you're actually saving any fuel doing that? I would think the acceleration part outweighs the coasting part.
or they have another lane they can pass you, as such and idiot who can't drive, by. This whole livin on the edge of being annoying to others
What makes you think you're on the edge? There are people out there who feel uncomfortable passing at all even on a multilane highway because they are terrified of the fast lane. And passing something who is driving erratically can be stressful to lots of people. You're well past the boundary of what's annoying.
but you know better who the real idiot is - the guy honking his horns on the huge manly unaerodynamic pickup truck, the manliness image for which he has to pay for dearly at the pump.
Heh I have to wonder if you are attacking the image of manliness because the way you drive is so unmanly and you know that and can't do anything about it, so you attack the entire idea of manliness so that nobody can be better than you? Or is it that your way of driving is a type of secret manliness which is better than other types of manliness so you actually feel better than others but sad that people don't realize that?
The reason your example works out like that is the channels have equal costs, which is unrealistic.
Let's say channel 1 costs $80/subscriber and channel 2 costs $20. So the total is still $100 with 2 subscribers.
Now they unbundle. A, which likes channel 1, now pays $160/month. B pays only $40/month.
My example is taking advantage of the difference between popularity (50% each) and cost (80% vs 20%). Perhaps in real life, the channel which costs $20 would only get 20% of the subscribers, in which case they'd still have to pay $100. However, I suspect in real life there are many channels that have broad appeal and lower than average costs. For instance there are many channels more popular than ESPN that cost a lot less. For instance, according to http://www.mediabistro.com/tvn... last month TNT, USA, TBS, History Channel, and Fox News were more popular than ESPN. But according to http://allthingsd.com/20100308... the costs are:
ESPN - $4.08
TNT - $0.99
Fox News - $0.58
USA - $0.55
TBS - $0.49
History - $0.22
HGTV, which is right after ESPN in April ratings, costs only $0.14.
So what would probably happen in the unbundled case is that enough people would subscribe to these channels that costs would approximately double. (I'm guessing this since I read that about 60% of the country watches ESPN, and these channels are about as popular). I would definitely pay $0.44/month for the History Channel because I like some of their shows (Pawn Stars, American Restoration, Vikings). At $1/month I might even pick up Fox News, and USA. I'm not sure about TNT and TBS. I would definitely not get ESPN.
Where the consumer gets screwed with a la carte pricing is the fixed costs of the cable company, into which I'm also categorizing current profit level (since cable companies aren't going to move to a la carte if it means less overall profit, regardless of margin).
Let's say today I pay $100/month for cable TV, of which $25 is fixed costs, $25 is profit, and $50 is content. The new model would be $25 for fixed costs, $25 for profit, and then whatever channels I want. So my minimum monthly bill is still $50 even for a single channel, which is ridiculous. Maybe I end up with 20 channels for $20/month, so my total bill is $70. I'm saving money, but only 30% for giving up 95% of the channels. And it would be sad because while I didn't pick up TNT, I would miss their showing of the Christmas Story or whatever in December. There would be a bunch of those lost opportunities, just to save $30. And the old system is no longer available to me, because buying all the channels would now cost $150 instead of $100.
But who knows, perhaps the cheap channels would be cheap enough that lots of people would subscribe even though they don't watch. When you're talking about channels costing $0.20/month or less, it's like "why not" except for channels you really, really don't have any interest in.
If the cable companies can pay fees to content providers based on subscribers to that channel and not total subscribers, then it's possible for the average bill to go down but the profit to stay the same or go up.
Let's say out of a $100 monthly cable bill, $25 goes to non-content costs, $50 goes to content, and $25 is profit. That suggests the minimum bill in an a la carte plan might be around $50, which would preserve the current profit level. Then the cable company can sell channels at cost plus and the new system would be more profitable than the current system even with a lower average bill.
The problem for consumers is you're not saving as much as you think since you still pay the fixed costs, plus the old profit level, plus a higher per-channel cost than you expect. But consumers could still save a bit of money. I wonder if it's worth it for the dramatic drop in variety though.