The parent post is bullshit. It states that only when the US purchases foreign goods with dollars are foreigners left holding dollars which they then invest back into the US market. See, it says that right here:
the only way oil (and other) imports can be made without causing the domestic finance system to go bankrupt is to make these transactions using the dollar as currency, so that the spendings are reinvested by the foreign exporters in the u.s. finance market.
In fact, the truth is that no matter what the currencty of exchange, foreigners are left holding U.S. dollars. Compare the purchase of German BMW in American dollars to its purchase in German marks and you find that the resulting balance of payments between nations is the same in both cases.
In dollars it goes like this:
The German seller says he will sell the car for X dollars. You give him X dollars and he gives you the car. Result: A German has X dollars and you have BMW.
In German marks it goes like this:
The German seller says he will sell the car for Y marks. A German currency dealer says that he will sell you Y marks for X dollars. You give the currency dealer X dollars and he gives you Y marks. You give Y marks to the guy with the BMW and he gives you the BMW. Result: A German has X dollars and you have BMW.
That ultimately the balance of dollars is shifted to Germany after the purchase of German goods by Americans is unavoidable and does not depend on what currency is accepted in exchange for those goods.
Otherwise u.s. importers would have to massiveley buy foreign currencies to pay the imports, which would lead to an enourmos decrease of the value of the greenback, resulting in higher inflation, less consumer spendings and thus to a decrease of the u.s. economic output over long.
That makes no sense at all. It is a nonsensical use of jargon. You thought if you used the words "inflation" "consumer spending" and "economic output" together in the same sentence that you would sound more important ? No. Words have meaning and should be used to express ideas. You sound like a Star Trek engineer, "The hyperdrive transmodulator has overloaded the intercouplers on the alphatron phase inverter, resulting in a decalibration of the transonic inductive energy couplers on the primary thrusters. We have to shut down the warp drive immediately!". It makes as much sense as what you wrote, and it is more honest about its status as fiction.
I'm sick of re-re-re-posting the exact same thing in response to comments like this, but here's one more go...
If you become frustrated with your inability to persuade others then perhaps it is time to reconsider your own beliefs. Maybe there is a reason why so many disagree with you.
The CLECs pay the ILECs the same for the lines as the ILECs pay themselves...
Regulating the lease rates of those lines supresses infrastructure growth because the rates which the FCC sets are below the level at which ILECs can recover investement made to upgrade the infrastructure. That not only the CLECs, but also the ILECs pay too little to recover upgrade costs makes the problem worse, not better. So this point which you make in support of the current system is in fact additional evidence against it.
Fair is fair.
It is exactly that attitude which caused this mess. The goal of making broadband service cheap and available to the CONSUMERS has been subordinated to the goal for all BUSINESSES to have equal, "fair is fair" access to profits. If we want consumer broadband to progress, then we want businesses which provide better value to the consumer to succeed. What we do not want is "fair is fair". In fact, we want harsh discrimination. Specifically, we want discrimination against providers which provide poor value. One problem with these FCC price controls is that the value which broadband service providers offer can not be discerned because they do not pay true costs. Hence companies which provide poor value survive, gobbling up resources.
With your "fair is fair" advocacy your primary interest is business: you are concerned with the equal distribution of profit between businesses. My primary concern is the consumer: Any distribution of profit between businesses is fine with me so long as it is one which results in more bandwith to me for less of my money. And we know something about how that distribution looks: its is not one where every business pays the same costs for bandwidth, as you advocate be imposed. Instead, it is one where the smarter and more efficient businesses pay less.
Those lines are build on public land with tax money....If you think sinking government money into a private company in return for nothing is a good idea
If you believe that government funds should not be spent for the benefit of private corporations, then you should advocate against that. You do not do that. Instead you advocate for regulation of those corporations.
I pay taxes. Some of the money which the government collects from me it spends on infrastructure which benefits private telecom corporations. What you advocate is that, because of this arrangement, governement regulators should be granted power to regulate the telecom market. Those regulations sustain wasteful corporations by guaranteeing "fair is fair" access at below market rates while discouraging investement in infrastructure by blocking off from the investors the profits realized from their investment. The result ? poor service to me at high rates. Your remedy for government screwing me once is that it screw me again.
Your attitude appears to be "the government is screwing me by making me buy telephone equipment for the regional telecoms. Therfore, the government should screw the telecoms to get back at them. I am getting fucked and they benefit from it, so they they should get fucked also, "fair is fair". That is a stupid attitude. The correct attitude is that nobody should get fucked, not the taxpayer, not the regional telecoms; Government should not compel me to buy equipment for the telecoms and it should not compel the telecoms to sell at particular rates.
Do you remember there being any DSL BEFORE they were forced to open their lines in 1996? No? Thought so. Remember ISDN and $1500 T1 Lines?
Like most people, I enjoy using the Internet on a daily basis but consider it a luxury I could live without.
People use the internet for work, education, shopping and enjoyment. That overall the predominent use is enjoyment is a fiction invented by you to bolster your argument for higher taxes. That fiction should not be mistaken for a fact or statistic.
Taxing Internet access makes more sense than taxing phones or food or other staples of life because it is generally the well-off that can afford access to it.
Raising the price of internet service with taxation makes internet access less affordable by the poor, the group least able to withstand price increases. The wealthy, of course, could afford to pay the tax. So by enacting an internet tax, you help to selectively deprive the poor of internet access.
Not only are the well-off more likely to purchase things online...
Again, you seem to be inventing fictional statistics here. Can you site the source ?
but the fact that they can dodge sales tax by doing so while the poor must pay when they go to the local stores is nearly an insult: this is one of those 'rich getting richer' schemes that doesn't get much airplay, but it should.
When internet sales are not taxed, everyhone pays the same tax on the internet sales: none. If you are wealthy, you pay none. If you are poor, you pay none. That's what "no tax" means.
You are inventing a complictated story, supported by your own made-up statistics, to contradict the obvious fact that "no internet taxes" means nobody pays internet sales taxes, rich and poor alike. Your claim that there is a sales demographic showing that only the rich shop on the internet looks suspicious. Who buys the used kitchen mixer on eBay for $2.77 ? Is it "the rich". I suggest you visit eBay, take note of what is bought and sold there, and consider how plasible is your lie that only the rich shop online.
Untaxed internet sales are a rare example where the group who earns above the mean income is not getting totally screwed. According to the IRS, the top 50% of income earners contribute 96% of all tax revenues. Because we (the upper 50%) pay almost all of the taxes, almost any tax cut will benefit us. To oppose a sales tax cut because it benefits "the wealthy" is to oppose all tax cuts.
Untaxed internet sales are a rare example where the group who earns the least can avoid painful sales taxes. Lower taxes help both rich and poor, and everyone in between.
I'll agree that it's been a pretty fun ride, but we've already discovered that the Internet isn't free. Now it's time for the tax collectors to catch up.
"I'll agree that it snowed in Denver this morning, but at one time some people thought that the moon was made out of green cheese. Now it is time for ketchup to be sold only in 8-oz bottles".
Some people have no grasp of syllogism. Put down that Jon Katz Handbook of Argumentative Logic for a moment and let's decode your statements:
1- People have liked the fact that there are no internet taxes.
2- The author and some other un-named group at one point believed that the internet was free. They have since realised that they were mistaken.
3- There should now be internet taxes.
Maybe you didn't notice, but you are not making sense. The first statement seems to be in opposition to the concluding statement. The second has no relevance at all, except perhaps to suggest that you must be kind of an idiot if you ever thought that internet was free, so maybe we should not trust you on the tax issue.
Your nefarious scheme is obvious:
1- Enact internet taxes because the rich should have to pay. We can't have the rich getting richer. If we fail to constantly raise tax rates, then the rich might get richer. Better raise taxes !
2- Additional taxation raises the total cost of internet service making it difficult for the poor to afford internet access. Higher taxes stifle the innovation which pushes down consumer prices. In this way, you push internet service out of reach for the poor.
3- Becasue the poor do not have internet access, create a vast, wasteful government bureaucracy to provide inferior internet service to the poor. Make sure that the agency is large enough that the loby of its own employees is a sufficiently potent political force to perpetuate the agency.
4- As the government internet service provider grows more wasteful, it will be difficult to cover up that fact. Grant the agency no-interest government "loans" but do not collect them. Devise indirect forms of taxation to hide the losses; Pass laws which mandate that private telecoms must lease infrastructure to the government at below market rates. Call this "deregulation".
5- Private corporations will either go bankrupt by providing service at a loss, or they will cheat. If they cheat, then fine them for cheating until they go bankrupt.
6- After you have driven private service providers into bankrupty you will have proof that "the market does not work" and that deregulation failed. Use this argument to expand the government agency which provides internet service for the poor into a monopoly service provider for the entire market.
7- Whenever the government ministry of internet service negotiates contracts, extort campaign donations. If your corruption is exposed, then extort more contributions so that you can overcome the negative publicity by purchasing additional campaign advertising. Because you are a monopoly service provider, anyone who wants internet service must go though you. This gives you good leverage when extorting tribute. So be sure to extort enough that you can affored to smother all reports of your corruption with counter publicity.
8- If political opponenents keep harping one your corruption, point out that they are part of the vast right-wing conspiracy which seeks to to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I happen to believe that there should be some more levels of negotiation in between failure to comply and ALL OUT WAR.
In summary: IPFreely 1) Concedes that Saddam is not going to disarm without war 2) Advocates that we should continue to negotiate with Saddam.
Advoctacating that we negotiate while simultaneosly stating that negotiation will fails is evident self-contradiction. My purpose in noting that contradiction is not to make a case either for or against war. Rather, I wish to draw attention to the fact that IPFreely, slashdot user number 47576, is a fucking moron.
How could _any_ rational person think that a clone of your old dog would know you and know the old tricks when it was born? They said it TWICE in the article, which makes me think someone somewhere thinks this is possible.
Some breeds of dog exhibit complex and specialized genetically programmed behaviors. So it is reasonable to expect that these behaviors could include tricks. Two such behaviors are pointing by the golden retriever and heeling by the australian blue heeler. You should realize that these animals, reared in isolation from birth, will exhibit these behaviors. They do not learn by watching other animals, nor are they conditioned by humans to exhibit these behaviors. Rather, they have been bred to perform these tricks without prior behavioral conditioning.
Heelers demonstrate heeling spontaneosly and early; a young heeler puppy will follow you around biting at your heels. They seem to think its fun. It's kind of annoying, actually.
So it seems reasonable that in addition to conditioned behaviors, some idiosyncratic and specialized behaviors wich we could classify as "tricks", are genetically programmed.
bla bla bla...The PCB concentration in the water droped because GE stoped pumping PCBs into the water! NOT becasue the river is healing itself...bla bla bla
A river is a moving body of water. Place anything in a river and there are two and only two things that can happen to it:
1- It is flushed out of the river by the current.
2- It sinks to the bottom.
You are alleging that instead something remains suspened in river water indefinitely but is not flushed out by the current. That is not possible.
I find that Amazon.com is a great place to shop and I would encourage others to do the same. But for Heaven's sake, I would never actually purchase from Amazon. The dubious ethics of their one-click patent are more than I can stomach.
Amazon's online product reviews, the ones provided by customers, I find to be extremely helpul when choosing a purchase. The book excerpts are also valuable. Their site is easily navigable, searches are smart, the pages graphically well-laid out. Once I choose what I want at Amazon, I just cut and paste the product number or ISBN number into the site search box of one of their competitors, hit the search button, and place the order. An ISBN number is an unambiguous descriptor of the product, so searches at competing vendors turn up the product instantly and you get the identical thing as if you orderded from Amazon.
I do find that Amazon's site is enough better for shopping that it warrants that extra cut and paste of the ISBN or product number. One thing which does distinquish Amazon from their bargain-basement competitors is the quality of their web site design, so why not take advantage of that, and have the best of both ? Convenient shopping (at Amazon) and low prices (from discount competitors).
Shopping at amazon and purchasing elsewhere also gives the warm feeling of serving a larger good, if only in small degree. I've hurt Amazon by loading their servers just a little harder and helped one of their competitors by giving them my business, and furthermore, whithout loading their servers as I browse products.
I'm not sure how long my moral conviction would last if it actually cost me more to purchase from an Amazon competitor, but so far I've always found lower prices and good service elsewhere. For books, in my experience, books-a-million has lower prices, equivalent selection and I am always satisfied with their service. Of course, I've been happy enough with that that I have not looked elsewhere, so there well be many other good alternatives to books-a-million which I have not discovered.
Walmart is the beginning of the end of American Middle Class. They kill a lot of small individually owned mom and pop stores when they move into a town. In the future we will all get to work for them at minimum wage and buy cheap crap from Asia. It is ironic that everyone is up in arms about M$'s behavior but is very passive about what is happening to small businesses. In my view both M$ and Walmart are predatory.
That's a four-part statement, and each of those parts is horse shit.
part 1> The job market is changing.
Well job displacement is what happens when a more efficient system replaces an older and less efficient system. Carriage makers and stable boys were displaced by car manufacturers and mechanics. Legions of accountants and file clerks have been displaced by personal computers. In a society where people are free to buy and sell according to their own interests the purchasing trends of the public change with technology and fashion. What do you advocate ? a system where government officials dictate at what stores you can shop and what you purchase, all for the purpose of acheving a technologically stagnant society which perfectly preserves every job category and rate of compensation?
part 2> If mom-and-pop stores die out, then middle-incomes salaries will cease to exist.
Everyone in the US who earns near the mean income level works in mom-and-pop retail stores. If those stores disappear, the distribution of incomes in the US will become bimodal, with no salaries near the mean income level. Riiiight... Why don't you put down that crack pipe until your head clears and then think about this again. You could start by considering if maybe there are any jobs, other than some of those in mom-and-pop stores, which pay near the mean income level.
part 3>Wal-Mart jobs pay less than jobs in Mom-and-Pop stores.
Do you have any evidence fot that, or are you just making that up ? Until you provide links to income data, I think its safe to assume that you are full of shit.
part 4> Because the number of jobs in Wal-mart stores is increasing and the number of jobs in mom-and-pop stores is in decline, then therefore those who would have worked in mom-and-pop stores are now working in Wal-mart.
You do not know from where Wal-mart employees are drawn and you don't know where those who otherwise would have worked in mom-and-pop shops work instead. Just becasue one job category is growing and another is shrinking does NOT mean that employees are transfered between those categories. For all you know, those who are not managing small retail businesses today could be working for Microsoft, and the new Wal-mart employees have moved up to those jobs from something less rewarding.
Without artificial... controls.. using the cheapest process without regard for the consequences is inevitable. It's actually the fiduciary duty of the execs in these industries to do this! If they were to switch to using a cleaner (but more expensive) process, they'd be sacked at best, and quite probably sued by their shareholders.
You got that totally ass-backwards:
An industrial process which consumes fewer resources is cleaner because it consumes fewer resources. An industrial process which consumes fewer resources is less expensive because it consumes fewer resources.
More efficient methods of production are more profitable because they consume fewer resources to produce the same amount. So long as resources cost money, there will be financial insentive to conserve resources. (One corallary is that government giveaways promote wasefulness.)
If I adopt a new manufacturing process which yields two widgets from every one pound of raw widgiteum, whereas previoulsy I only produced one widget for each pound of widgiteam, then I lower my costs of producing a widget. The cost which I charge for widgets is unaffected. Therefore, my profit, the difference between what I spend in producing a widget and what I earn from its sale, increases if I conserve resources.
This can apply to public goods such as the air and the oceans just as it can to exchangable goods such as steel and oil. For example, with air, all that is neccessary is to charge air polluters in proportion to how much pollution they release into the air. Doing that provides financial insentive to pollute less, in the same way that the cost of a good provides financial insentive to consume less of it. The profit motive can work to lower pollution. If it costs money to pollute, then the profifit motive works for the environment, not against it. For those who understand such terms, all that is necessary is that the government internalize exterternalities.
(which we're not going to get under undisputed reign of George II)
If you look at who lines up on the side of tradable pollution credits, a way of charging polluters according two how much they pollute, it is conservatives. If you look at who is against that, it is liberals.
Does anyone else get the impression that this will be yet another area where, yet again, corporate america is already WAY out in front of socialist Europe governments ? (or, if you live here, I guess you'd just call Corporate America "business":) )
IBM made Linux adoption one of its top goals a few years ago and announce a billion dollar Linux budget. HP is in there also, having hired Bruce Perens, and hell, the great Linus himself was hired out of Europe by Corporate America. Intel was early with a Linux port to Itanium. Google runs on it. American corporations fab almost all CPUs on which Linux runs.
Therefore, in my mind, it makes perfect sense for a business (a private one at least) to setup it's IT infrastructure based around a platform created by volunteer programmers for any individual or institition willing to accept the terms of the GPL. Its a smart corporate strategy which lowers costs by reducing software licensing fees.
Europe is once again made look like a continent run by catch-up socialist regulators, who follow in distant pursuit of trends set by US corporations.
"However, I have a case against price discrimination, and that's because, in my own experience, most of the time it's unjust. I make about 20K$US/year in Finland (senior IT worker), while I would do in the range of 35-45 in UK, yet some stuff here is more expensive than in UK. Finland is actually one of the most expensive countries in Europe. It gets even worse..."
Here are some other causes of regional price variation:
1. Variation in the costs of production. Some costs which vary geographically are: a. Labor. b. The cost of naturual resources owing to their unequal geographic distribution. c. The rate of taxation. 3. Trade barriers such as tarrifs. Note that trade barriers are an instance of price fixing. Producers within a nation persuade their goverment to prevent importers from selling a good below the price at which domestic producers are willing to sell. They are price fixing; different producers agreeing to fix the price above a set minimum by banning from the market imports marked below that minimum.
How much each of those factors or others unmentioned contribute to the differences in prices which you cite we don't know. Before that is known, it seems incorrect to attribute your hardships to price discrimination.
To someone paid little but living in an expensive country, price discrimination should work to your benefit, not to your detriment. With price discrimination, the seller believes: "This potential customer is less able to pay the price which I am asking because he has a low income. To sell to him, it is necessary that I lower the price. However, If I do lower the price, then I will earn a smaller profit than when I sell the good for a higher price. But then, if I insisted on a high price, the potential customer would not purchase the good, and I would make no profit at all in a sale to him. A small profit is better than no profit, therefore I will lower my price for this person".
You might believe that is bad reasoning because by selling to you at a low price the seller is passing up the opportunity to sell to someone else willing to pay a higher price. In fact, the seller may have more goods on hand than than he can sell to other purchasers at higher prices.
To the extent that your own plight involves price discrimination, it might not result from from price discrimination, but from the imperfect practice of price discrimination. Sellers fail to identify you as someone less able to pay. That is becasue, when setting the price to you, they might rely on the crude measure of average national income as an indicator of your own income. If sellers actaully knew your income and used that knowldge to set the price, instead of relying on the national average income to infer your income, it would work out better for you and for them.
"price discrimination, [is] in my own experience, most of the time... unjust."
Perhaps there are two statements in that: 1- Most of the time price discrimination is unjust. 2- In your own experience price discrimination is unjust.
If so, I would prefer to put this way: If sellers set prices according to the average national income, then on average, and most of the time, price discrimination is "just". As someone whos own income differs from the average national income, in your experience price discrimination is "unjust."
You are also implying that it is an injustice for those with low sallaries to pay the same price as those with high sallaries. I agree that the less wealthy would be better off if they received a discount, but I am not willing to invoke the notion of justice in disaproval of equal prices. I only used the term "justice", to avoid a long discussion about what prices have to do with justice.
One more small comment which I find interesting: If you know that price discrimination benefits both the seller and those for whom he lowers his prices, then you can see through charitable price reductions to the selfish motives of the seller.
"I make about 20K$US/year in Finland (senior IT worker)"
From my perspective (New York City cost of living) that seems absurdly low for your job.
I make 70K$US/year before taxes + full medical benefits as a c/c++ programmer in New York, I think that's about normal here for that line of work, at least it was about two years ago when I took the job.
So a couple of years ago I wanted to take a vacation to Scandanavia with the woman I was dating then. She had a small income, she insisted that I not pay for everything, and she said the trip would be expensive. She lived in London. We went to Italy, I passing up the opportunity to experience the sales prices in Finland.
"you're forgetting something: No producer will ever sell a product at a loss."
1- I'm not forgetting that, I'm just not mentioning it becasue it has no implications for the issue of whether Nintendo or DVD region coding are instances of price discrimination, or for the ethicality of price discrimination.
2- It is not true that "No producer will ever sell a product at a loss." Producers will sell at the highest price they can, even if that price requires taking a loss. What they usually do not do is to produce a product with the intent to sell at a loss. Things like Xbox seem like a violation of that rule, but if you define the product as the Xbox+game software sales, then the rule holds.
"Price discrimination is attempting to partition a market for higher prices"
Right.
"such discrimination requires some sort of restraint of free trade."
If we can agree that free trade means that voluntary transactions, and only voluntary transactions are permitted, then: I can sell ice cream cones in the local market and haggle with each customer over price, charging different customers different prices. Each sale is a free trade, an exchange voluntarily agreed to by both parties. So here we have an example with price discrimination and with no restraint of free trade. Therefore, restraint of free trade is not required to practice price discrimination.
"Its hard to have price discrimination without either price fixing or a monopoly."
See the example above. No monopoly. No price fixing. Price discrimination.
So why doesn't price discrimination depend on coercive tactics ? Because some buyers will VOLUNTARILY pay more than others. In free markets, sellers have many ways of sorting buyers according to their willingness to pay, without resorting to coercive tactics which require monopoly or restraint of trade. One simple way is to sell at a high price first and then reduce the price when the inventory does not move. People who are willing to buy at the high price pay the high price. People who are not, wait for the low price.
"In the case of a monopoly (like those enforced by copyright), there is nothing to restrain the producer from abuse."
That's a statement about the power of monopolies. It does not say anything about price discrimination.
"Is it moral for the government to tax more from those who earn more? A person earnin g 50% more income could use fewer government services than one earning less."
I won't disucuss tax laws in moral terms. But a few comments on the subject of "tax[ing] more from those who earn more?"
- A flat income tax rate with no exemptions is the most effective form of that. Multiply your income by some fraction and give that much to the government. The current system of a progressive tax rate with exemptions permits substantial deviations from that. A progressive tax rate without exemptions is not politically feasible, I suspect. - How is it better or worse than taxing more from those who spend more ?
I think that's a good point. A few comments in response:
I'm sticking with your earlier suggestion that region coding is price discrimination, I disagree that it is price fixing. As you observe, the usefulness of regional price discrimination as a strategy for raising the average sales price decreases as the variation in income levels within a region increases. However innefective, the practice is still price discrimination: charging different customers different prices for the identical product.
The MPAA, as a consortium, is in a good position to engage in price fixing and it might be doing that. I am not arguing that the MPAA does not engage in price fixing. I am making the narrower point that charging different buyers different prices does not constitute price fixing. Rather, different producers agreeing among themselves to not sell below a fixed minimum price is what constitutes price fixing. MPAA members could be doing that, I don't know.
Do I support price discrimination ? I would not say that I advocate it. I would only say that the idea that different buyers pay different prices for the identical good does not bother me.
Do I support price fixing ? No, I am against it. But it is like being against sickness, poverty and chronic drug addiction. Political disputes about such matters never involve "for" or "against" arguments, but rather questions of what are the most desirable means of prevention.
Anyway, I liked your point, so back to follow up on that: If the MPAA had made Albania a separate region then MPAA members could sell at lower prices more DVDs within that country, realizing higher revenues, while at the same time maintaining higher prices in wealthier parts of Europe, with no loss of revenues. Albanians would pay lower prices, so we could expect them to be for it.
So why didn't the MPAA make Albania a seperate region ? Maybe, the MPAA is limited to maintaining the same price within each political region. As with Nintendo, the EU would fine the MPAA if, as policy, it charged different prices in England than in Albania. The EU is a poltical body which polices uniform prices within the boundaries of Europe but not without. No authority would fine the MPAA if it charged different prices in England and Japan, because there is no body with political or legal authority within both of those countries. Hence England and Japan are seperate DVD regions but England and Albania are not.
If you believe a more sensible policy would be to sell DVDs to the Albanians for less than the price which the English are charged, then you are advocating price discrimination, the freedom of the producer to negotiate differnt prices for different customers.
The deal struck by the poorer countries within Europe with the wealther European nations, as a condition for EU membership, seems to be that the people of poor countries must pay the same prices as those in wealthy countries. Mario Monte proclaims it must be one price for all, which lowers the price to the wealthy and raises that to the poor.
I would guess that it is politically feasible only to enforce such a policy on luxery goods manufactured ouside of the EU, but I can't back that up with knowledge of prices there, I live in New York City and don't shop in Europe often.
I don't like with what the MPAA does with region coding. Not because I believe price discrimination is "unethical", but for these reasons instead:
-As a citizen of a wealthy country (US), I get charged more. This is purely financial selfishness on my part and I claim no moral right to a lower price.
-Though I do not believe that the MPAA's price discrimination itself is "unethical" I also do not agree with the means by which the MPAA guards that price discrimination scheme; by substantially violating of my intellectual freedom. Certainly in this forum it should not be necessary to elaborate on that statement.
I suspect the MPAA is exempt from any restrictions on price discrimination because within the jurisdiction of any one goverment, the MPAA charges the same price.
The Ninentendo case is an example of price discrimination not price fixing.
Price discrimination is when a single producer charges different customes different prices. Price fixing is when different producers agree to sell to all customers for the same price.
What followes is some detail on each and then some argumentation for why the ethical case against price discrimination generally is weak, without adressing the Nintendo case particularly.
Price fixing is an instance of collusion, where ostensibly competing producers negotiate an agreement to restrict price competetion between themselves. That is, producers agree not to sell their product for below some specified amount. The purpose of the agreement is to increase sales profits by rasing sales prices. Note that such agreements are always accompanied by another agreement about how producers divide up the market. Sometimes producers carve up the market geographically. For example, "You sell in Michigan and I'll sell in Ohio." Sometimes producers carve up the market by number of sales. "You won't sell more than x billion barrels of oil and I won't either."
OPEC is the quintessential example of a price fixing organization. Price fixing is its sole and explicit purpose. (OPEC can do this because it is an organization of governments, and there exists no super-governmental body to place on governments the same rules by which those nations govern their citizens.)
Price discrimination, on the other hand, is a pricing strategy of a lone seller for raising profits on sales without organizing agreements with his competitors. For each buyer, the seller attempts to negotiate the maximum price that buyer will pay. For the seller, this stragy works to raise net sales income above what would be obtained with a one-price-for-all strategy.
The moral case against is price discrimination is pretty weak for these reasons:
-Because richer customers are willing to pay more, in practice price discimination amounts to giving poorer customers a break on price. It places the costs of production more heavely on those who can best afford them. If you look at Nintendo's pricing scheme, I would predict you find that Nintendo charged more in richer countries and less in poorer countries. -Most people don't regard price discrimination as unethical. There are plenty of examples which demonstrate how this is cool with most people. Like Priceline's "Name your own price". Or the bazaar, where buyers and sellers haggle over prices, the buyer attempting to determine the lowest price at which the seller will part with a good and the seller trying to find the highest price which the buyer is willing to pay. There is no guarantee or even an expectation that such a system will result in the same price for each customer, and that's just cool with everyone. -With progressive taxation, tax payers are assessed different fees according to their ability to pay. With price discrimination, buyers pay different fees according to their willingness to pay. Goverments make the "Different people pay different amounts" argument in the case of taxation. However, the argue against "different people pay different amounts" in the case of private sales. The reason for the contradictory approaches is that with taxation, goverment is as the recipient of tax revenues adopts the strategy which maximizes those revenues. In the case of corporate sales, they have little such insentive. My point here is not that one or the other is eithically correct, but that it is difficult to make the ethical case for one as you engage in the other.
With price discrimination, the rich lose out becasue sellers can exploit their willingness to pay more than the poor. Mario Monte stands for their interets here.
Policing the content before they agree to sell it potentially gives WalMart an un-acceptable degree of control over what information is available, and how it is presented.
1) The writer does not state that Wal-Mart exercises "an un-acceptable degree of control" He states that Wal-Mart has the "potential" to exercise such control. Speaking of potentials allows him to associate with Wal-Mart a harmful act, when in fact none has occurred; He portrays Wal-mart unfavorably by accusing it of having the "potential" to censor, not of having censored.
We could contrive similar unfair accusations against the writer himself. "As the purchaser of a kitchen knife, he has the potential to murder every member of his household in their sleep." Or "As the owner of penis, he has the potential to rape children". These "potentials" for harm do not express a liklyhood of harm, or even allow its possibility, given unstated constraints. Yet such statements are indisputably factually correct in the abstract sense that stabbing is one among many possible uses of a knife.
The point is not that the writer is likely to kill or rape, but rather that such accusations of a "potential" are distinct from, and in no way constitute, actual harm or even the threat of harm.
2) The writer uses the term "policing" to denote a voluntary agreement between magazine publishers and Wal-Mart; publishers choose to respond to Wal-Mart's interests in restricting magazine content, expressed in advance of publication, in return for some assurance that Wal-mart will retail their publication after publication. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement; publishers can improve their chances of selling magazines and Wal-mart can make available more products satisfying its standards. In comparison, A police action is and act of coercive control. Those being policed are subject to involuntary control, and have no say whether to participate in being "policed". When we do have a say, then it is incorrect to use the term "policed." Policing is essentially involuntary on the part of those policed. The relationship between Wal-mart and publishers is voluntary. The writer has chosen a word opposite in meaning to the actual situation.
3) The writer is obsessed alone with Wal-Mart's influence on magazine content. Yet the content of every publication is controlled. Readers, in deciding what to purchase, exercise some control over what is published. Writers, in choosing what to write, exercise control. Advertisers, in negotiating the purchase of ad placement and price, exercise control. Editors control by selecting what is published, and publishers exert control by hiring and firing editors. The choice of what to publish is the outcome of the cooperative engagment of several parties with variously united and opposing interests. Wal-mart is one among many parties exercising influence over the content of magazines sold it its stores. The writer alleges without reason that Wal-mart's influence alone should be suppressed.
4) The writer claims that Wal-mart has the potential for an "un-acceptable degree of control". Yet he has not told us what degree of control Wal-Mart potentially has, nor what degree of control he deems acceptable. He is comparing two unstated magnitudes. He says: The degree of control > the acceptable degree of control. Symbolically, X > Y. What's X ? He doesn't know. What's Y ? He doesn't know. Nontheless he's darn sure that X is greater than Y.
5)
The writer argues against an extreme "degree of control", yet he is incorrect to assume that an extreme degree of control is socially undesirable. An absolute ban on some material constitues extreme control and yet could be beneficial. Many would agree that forbidding child pornogrphy and pro-Nazi endorsements might be socially beneficial acts. The point is not that Wal-mart will always use its powers for good, nor in all cases will there be common agreement about what subject material is suitable for sale in a family-oriented store such as Wal-mart. Rather, the point is that the disirability of control is not specified by the degree of control. Extreme control can be viewed fovorably in one instance and unfavorably in another.
6)The writer fails to mention that Wal-Mart exerts control only over magazines sold in its store. Instead, the unqualified, sweeping phrase " degree of control over what information is available," is used, as if its control encompassed all information released upon society. In fact Wal-Mart can exert no influece over magazines which it does not carry.
Who elected WalMart to the position of official censor?
1) As stated above, Wal-Mart is one of many parties with influence over the content of the magazines which appear on its shevles. The only single parties with absolute power to restric content are governmental.
2) Freedom of expression has two parts. i)The freedom to choose what statements we endorse and promote. ii) The freedom to choose not to endorse or promote statements with which we disagree.
The writer opposes freedom of expression by advocating that Wal-mart be compelled to promote views which it opposes. Wal-Mart exercises its freedom of expression by excluding from its store shelves material which it does not wish to promote. By labelling Wal-Mart a "censor" the writer incorrectly identifies Wal-Mart as oppsing freedom of expression. In fact, it is the writer who opposes freedom of expression in seeking to deny Wal-Mart influence in restricting the content of magazines sold in its stores.
The crucial point is that compelling any organization to promote a view with which it disagrees violates an essential freedom. Wal-mart exersizes freedom and the writer opposes that.
What if the Waltons decide that they really don't like abortion, and pressure magazines to adjust their content accordingly.
1) From the writer's point of view, freedom should be prohibited becasue if organizations are given freedom to express and promote their own beliefs, they might use that freedom to promote views with which he disagrees. As an example, he sites the possibility that Wal-Mart could advance one specific point of view which he opposes, restrictions on abortion.
2) One might just as well as well ask what would happen if the Waltons decided that they wanted to raise money for cancer research, and influenced magazines to encourage contributions to medical research. The point here is not that the Walton's are any more likely to use their powers for good than for evil. Rather, the point is that because either possibility exists, the power to influence is not inherently bad.
I suspect that if it were microsoft pressuring MSNBC to present the Beast in a more favourable light, the howls of outrage would be deafening.
1) A comparable comparison is Wal-Mart pressuring publications to portray Wal-Mart favorably
Microsoft pressuring MSNBC to portray Wal-Mart favorably.
We have no evidence that Wal-mart is pressuing publications to portray Wal-Mart favorably. It is therefore easy to explain why Wal-Mart has not been subject to the "howls of outrage "which we expect Micrsoft would recieve; it has not engaged in a comparable misdeed.
"77,000 BTU of energy requires inputs totalling about 131,000 BTU (if memory serves)."
I store this factoid in a more compact form, that the fuel consumed in the production of ethanol contains 1.7 times the enery as the ethanol. Which fits with the figures you give.
By the way, those who can not obtain ethanol fuel at the pump can simulate the experience of driving on a gallon of ethanol using regular fossil fuel: 1- Purchase 1.7 gallons of gasoline. 2- Poor 1 gallon into your tank. 3- Poor the remaining 0.7 gallons into nearby ditch. Ignite.
Those after a more realistic experience can also send ADM a check, cut down trees and dump topsoil into a river. If anyone questions you, denounce them as a corporate whore of the fossil fuel industry then move to Nebraska and vote for Tom Daschle.
Re:to the deniers of global warming...
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 1
ore C02 == more plants, ergo drive a car to save a tree.
Boosting CO2 levels does fertilize plants, just as does adding nutrients to the soil. They grow faster. I'm not sure that promoting tree growth is the same thing as saving a tree. You don't have more trees, you have more tree. Bigger trees, not more of them. But in my opinion any reasonable reader would grant you license with that, the distinction isn't relevent if the goal is more plant growth.
The notion that the side-effects of human activity can be beneficial to nature as well as harmful is unconventional, but certainly not incorrect. It contradicts liberal envronmentalist dogma, and I suspect that has something to do with why you were moderated down. Bummer.
Re:Days of denial are over.
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 1
Environmental zealotry and religious zealotry share epistemologies. Consider the following:
If you don't think global warming is real, great, PROVE IT!
If you don't think God is real, great, PROVE IT!
The epistemological case against this type of argumentation has been well made. In a nutshell, anyone who insists that something must exist because you can't prove that it doesn't is full of shit. James "The Amazing" Randy, arch debunker of the paranormal, presents clear arguments for this. For deep thought on the merits of falsifyability see Karl Popper.
Re:oh no... more global warming (...not...??)
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 1
Is it not possible to be right wing and concerned about the environment?
Yes it is possible. See: Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Envrironmentalists a Conservative Manifesto by Peter Huber.
The author has an engineering degree from MIT and a law degree from Harvard. His engineering background comes through in the writing. Highly recommended reading, even if you are inclinded to disagree with it.
Slashdot Mirror
the only way oil (and other) imports can be made without causing the domestic finance system to go bankrupt is to make these transactions using the dollar as currency, so that the spendings are reinvested by the foreign exporters in the u.s. finance market.
In fact, the truth is that no matter what the currencty of exchange, foreigners are left holding U.S. dollars. Compare the purchase of German BMW in American dollars to its purchase in German marks and you find that the resulting balance of payments between nations is the same in both cases.
In dollars it goes like this:
The German seller says he will sell the car for X dollars. You give him X dollars and he gives you the car. Result: A German has X dollars and you have BMW.
In German marks it goes like this:
The German seller says he will sell the car for Y marks. A German currency dealer says that he will sell you Y marks for X dollars. You give the currency dealer X dollars and he gives you Y marks. You give Y marks to the guy with the BMW and he gives you the BMW. Result: A German has X dollars and you have BMW.
That ultimately the balance of dollars is shifted to Germany after the purchase of German goods by Americans is unavoidable and does not depend on what currency is accepted in exchange for those goods.
Otherwise u.s. importers would have to massiveley buy foreign currencies to pay the imports, which would lead to an enourmos decrease of the value of the greenback, resulting in higher inflation, less consumer spendings and thus to a decrease of the u.s. economic output over long.
That makes no sense at all. It is a nonsensical use of jargon. You thought if you used the words "inflation" "consumer spending" and "economic output" together in the same sentence that you would sound more important ? No. Words have meaning and should be used to express ideas. You sound like a Star Trek engineer, "The hyperdrive transmodulator has overloaded the intercouplers on the alphatron phase inverter, resulting in a decalibration of the transonic inductive energy couplers on the primary thrusters. We have to shut down the warp drive immediately!". It makes as much sense as what you wrote, and it is more honest about its status as fiction.
Somebody has been reading too much "Godel, Escher, Bach".
If you become frustrated with your inability to persuade others then perhaps it is time to reconsider your own beliefs. Maybe there is a reason why so many disagree with you.
The CLECs pay the ILECs the same for the lines as the ILECs pay themselves...
Regulating the lease rates of those lines supresses infrastructure growth because the rates which the FCC sets are below the level at which ILECs can recover investement made to upgrade the infrastructure. That not only the CLECs, but also the ILECs pay too little to recover upgrade costs makes the problem worse, not better. So this point which you make in support of the current system is in fact additional evidence against it.
Fair is fair.
It is exactly that attitude which caused this mess. The goal of making broadband service cheap and available to the CONSUMERS has been subordinated to the goal for all BUSINESSES to have equal, "fair is fair" access to profits. If we want consumer broadband to progress, then we want businesses which provide better value to the consumer to succeed. What we do not want is "fair is fair". In fact, we want harsh discrimination. Specifically, we want discrimination against providers which provide poor value. One problem with these FCC price controls is that the value which broadband service providers offer can not be discerned because they do not pay true costs. Hence companies which provide poor value survive, gobbling up resources.
With your "fair is fair" advocacy your primary interest is business: you are concerned with the equal distribution of profit between businesses. My primary concern is the consumer: Any distribution of profit between businesses is fine with me so long as it is one which results in more bandwith to me for less of my money. And we know something about how that distribution looks: its is not one where every business pays the same costs for bandwidth, as you advocate be imposed. Instead, it is one where the smarter and more efficient businesses pay less.
Those lines are build on public land with tax money. ...If you think sinking government money into a private company in return for nothing is a good idea
If you believe that government funds should not be spent for the benefit of private corporations, then you should advocate against that. You do not do that. Instead you advocate for regulation of those corporations.
I pay taxes. Some of the money which the government collects from me it spends on infrastructure which benefits private telecom corporations. What you advocate is that, because of this arrangement, governement regulators should be granted power to regulate the telecom market. Those regulations sustain wasteful corporations by guaranteeing "fair is fair" access at below market rates while discouraging investement in infrastructure by blocking off from the investors the profits realized from their investment. The result ? poor service to me at high rates. Your remedy for government screwing me once is that it screw me again.
Your attitude appears to be "the government is screwing me by making me buy telephone equipment for the regional telecoms. Therfore, the government should screw the telecoms to get back at them. I am getting fucked and they benefit from it, so they they should get fucked also, "fair is fair". That is a stupid attitude. The correct attitude is that nobody should get fucked, not the taxpayer, not the regional telecoms; Government should not compel me to buy equipment for the telecoms and it should not compel the telecoms to sell at particular rates.
Do you remember there being any DSL BEFORE they were forced to open their lines in 1996? No? Thought so. Remember ISDN and $1500 T1 Lines?
Dude, really, Post hoc ergo propter hoc ?
Square drive ! Use Square drive screws !
People use the internet for work, education, shopping and enjoyment. That overall the predominent use is enjoyment is a fiction invented by you to bolster your argument for higher taxes. That fiction should not be mistaken for a fact or statistic.
Taxing Internet access makes more sense than taxing phones or food or other staples of life because it is generally the well-off that can afford access to it.
Raising the price of internet service with taxation makes internet access less affordable by the poor, the group least able to withstand price increases. The wealthy, of course, could afford to pay the tax. So by enacting an internet tax, you help to selectively deprive the poor of internet access.
Not only are the well-off more likely to purchase things online...
Again, you seem to be inventing fictional statistics here. Can you site the source ?
but the fact that they can dodge sales tax by doing so while the poor must pay when they go to the local stores is nearly an insult: this is one of those 'rich getting richer' schemes that doesn't get much airplay, but it should.
When internet sales are not taxed, everyhone pays the same tax on the internet sales: none. If you are wealthy, you pay none. If you are poor, you pay none. That's what "no tax" means.
You are inventing a complictated story, supported by your own made-up statistics, to contradict the obvious fact that "no internet taxes" means nobody pays internet sales taxes, rich and poor alike. Your claim that there is a sales demographic showing that only the rich shop on the internet looks suspicious. Who buys the used kitchen mixer on eBay for $2.77 ? Is it "the rich". I suggest you visit eBay, take note of what is bought and sold there, and consider how plasible is your lie that only the rich shop online.
Untaxed internet sales are a rare example where the group who earns above the mean income is not getting totally screwed. According to the IRS, the top 50% of income earners contribute 96% of all tax revenues. Because we (the upper 50%) pay almost all of the taxes, almost any tax cut will benefit us. To oppose a sales tax cut because it benefits "the wealthy" is to oppose all tax cuts.
Untaxed internet sales are a rare example where the group who earns the least can avoid painful sales taxes. Lower taxes help both rich and poor, and everyone in between.
I'll agree that it's been a pretty fun ride, but we've already discovered that the Internet isn't free. Now it's time for the tax collectors to catch up.
"I'll agree that it snowed in Denver this morning, but at one time some people thought that the moon was made out of green cheese. Now it is time for ketchup to be sold only in 8-oz bottles".
Some people have no grasp of syllogism. Put down that Jon Katz Handbook of Argumentative Logic for a moment and let's decode your statements:
1- People have liked the fact that there are no internet taxes.
2- The author and some other un-named group at one point believed that the internet was free. They have since realised that they were mistaken.
3- There should now be internet taxes.
Maybe you didn't notice, but you are not making sense. The first statement seems to be in opposition to the concluding statement. The second has no relevance at all, except perhaps to suggest that you must be kind of an idiot if you ever thought that internet was free, so maybe we should not trust you on the tax issue.
Your nefarious scheme is obvious:
1- Enact internet taxes because the rich should have to pay. We can't have the rich getting richer. If we fail to constantly raise tax rates, then the rich might get richer. Better raise taxes !
2- Additional taxation raises the total cost of internet service making it difficult for the poor to afford internet access. Higher taxes stifle the innovation which pushes down consumer prices. In this way, you push internet service out of reach for the poor.
3- Becasue the poor do not have internet access, create a vast, wasteful government bureaucracy to provide inferior internet service to the poor. Make sure that the agency is large enough that the loby of its own employees is a sufficiently potent political force to perpetuate the agency.
4- As the government internet service provider grows more wasteful, it will be difficult to cover up that fact. Grant the agency no-interest government "loans" but do not collect them. Devise indirect forms of taxation to hide the losses; Pass laws which mandate that private telecoms must lease infrastructure to the government at below market rates. Call this "deregulation".
5- Private corporations will either go bankrupt by providing service at a loss, or they will cheat. If they cheat, then fine them for cheating until they go bankrupt.
6- After you have driven private service providers into bankrupty you will have proof that "the market does not work" and that deregulation failed. Use this argument to expand the government agency which provides internet service for the poor into a monopoly service provider for the entire market.
7- Whenever the government ministry of internet service negotiates contracts, extort campaign donations. If your corruption is exposed, then extort more contributions so that you can overcome the negative publicity by purchasing additional campaign advertising. Because you are a monopoly service provider, anyone who wants internet service must go though you. This gives you good leverage when extorting tribute. So be sure to extort enough that you can affored to smother all reports of your corruption with counter publicity.
8- If political opponenents keep harping one your corruption, point out that they are part of the vast right-wing conspiracy which seeks to to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
This guy wants to be sure that he can nuke the United States:
"That's why I will go and vote even for communists or facists if they support upkeeping serious amounts of nuclear weapons able to wipe US"
Slashdot values that +4 Insightful. Also at +4 Insigntful, United States=Nazi Germany:
"The US is now what Germany was in the 30's...".
"Saddam is _not_ going to disarm peacefully."
IPFreely(47576):
Agreed. ...
I happen to believe that there should be some more levels of negotiation in between failure to comply and ALL OUT WAR.
In summary: IPFreely 1) Concedes that Saddam is not going to disarm without war 2) Advocates that we should continue to negotiate with Saddam.
Advoctacating that we negotiate while simultaneosly stating that negotiation will fails is evident self-contradiction. My purpose in noting that contradiction is not to make a case either for or against war. Rather, I wish to draw attention to the fact that IPFreely, slashdot user number 47576, is a fucking moron.
Some breeds of dog exhibit complex and specialized genetically programmed behaviors. So it is reasonable to expect that these behaviors could include tricks. Two such behaviors are pointing by the golden retriever and heeling by the australian blue heeler. You should realize that these animals, reared in isolation from birth, will exhibit these behaviors. They do not learn by watching other animals, nor are they conditioned by humans to exhibit these behaviors. Rather, they have been bred to perform these tricks without prior behavioral conditioning.
Heelers demonstrate heeling spontaneosly and early; a young heeler puppy will follow you around biting at your heels. They seem to think its fun. It's kind of annoying, actually.
So it seems reasonable that in addition to conditioned behaviors, some idiosyncratic and specialized behaviors wich we could classify as "tricks", are genetically programmed.
A river is a moving body of water. Place anything in a river and there are two and only two things that can happen to it:
1- It is flushed out of the river by the current. 2- It sinks to the bottom.
You are alleging that instead something remains suspened in river water indefinitely but is not flushed out by the current. That is not possible.
I find that Amazon.com is a great place to shop and I would encourage others to do the same. But for Heaven's sake, I would never actually purchase from Amazon. The dubious ethics of their one-click patent are more than I can stomach.
Amazon's online product reviews, the ones provided by customers, I find to be extremely helpul when choosing a purchase. The book excerpts are also valuable. Their site is easily navigable, searches are smart, the pages graphically well-laid out. Once I choose what I want at Amazon, I just cut and paste the product number or ISBN number into the site search box of one of their competitors, hit the search button, and place the order. An ISBN number is an unambiguous descriptor of the product, so searches at competing vendors turn up the product instantly and you get the identical thing as if you orderded from Amazon.
I do find that Amazon's site is enough better for shopping that it warrants that extra cut and paste of the ISBN or product number. One thing which does distinquish Amazon from their bargain-basement competitors is the quality of their web site design, so why not take advantage of that, and have the best of both ? Convenient shopping (at Amazon) and low prices (from discount competitors).
Shopping at amazon and purchasing elsewhere also gives the warm feeling of serving a larger good, if only in small degree. I've hurt Amazon by loading their servers just a little harder and helped one of their competitors by giving them my business, and furthermore, whithout loading their servers as I browse products.
I'm not sure how long my moral conviction would last if it actually cost me more to purchase from an Amazon competitor, but so far I've always found lower prices and good service elsewhere. For books, in my experience, books-a-million has lower prices, equivalent selection and I am always satisfied with their service. Of course, I've been happy enough with that that I have not looked elsewhere, so there well be many other good alternatives to books-a-million which I have not discovered.
Archimedes
Socrates
Aristophanes
Adiophiles
It's no so that you can read your e-mail when you go to the park, its so that you can go to the park when you read your e-mail.
That's a four-part statement, and each of those parts is horse shit.
part 1> The job market is changing.
Well job displacement is what happens when a more efficient system replaces an older and less efficient system. Carriage makers and stable boys were displaced by car manufacturers and mechanics. Legions of accountants and file clerks have been displaced by personal computers. In a society where people are free to buy and sell according to their own interests the purchasing trends of the public change with technology and fashion. What do you advocate ? a system where government officials dictate at what stores you can shop and what you purchase, all for the purpose of acheving a technologically stagnant society which perfectly preserves every job category and rate of compensation?
part 2> If mom-and-pop stores die out, then middle-incomes salaries will cease to exist.
Everyone in the US who earns near the mean income level works in mom-and-pop retail stores. If those stores disappear, the distribution of incomes in the US will become bimodal, with no salaries near the mean income level. Riiiight... Why don't you put down that crack pipe until your head clears and then think about this again. You could start by considering if maybe there are any jobs, other than some of those in mom-and-pop stores, which pay near the mean income level.
part 3>Wal-Mart jobs pay less than jobs in Mom-and-Pop stores.
Do you have any evidence fot that, or are you just making that up ? Until you provide links to income data, I think its safe to assume that you are full of shit.
part 4> Because the number of jobs in Wal-mart stores is increasing and the number of jobs in mom-and-pop stores is in decline, then therefore those who would have worked in mom-and-pop stores are now working in Wal-mart.
You do not know from where Wal-mart employees are drawn and you don't know where those who otherwise would have worked in mom-and-pop shops work instead. Just becasue one job category is growing and another is shrinking does NOT mean that employees are transfered between those categories. For all you know, those who are not managing small retail businesses today could be working for Microsoft, and the new Wal-mart employees have moved up to those jobs from something less rewarding.
You got that totally ass-backwards:
An industrial process which consumes fewer resources is cleaner because it consumes fewer resources. An industrial process which consumes fewer resources is less expensive because it consumes fewer resources.
More efficient methods of production are more profitable because they consume fewer resources to produce the same amount. So long as resources cost money, there will be financial insentive to conserve resources. (One corallary is that government giveaways promote wasefulness.)
If I adopt a new manufacturing process which yields two widgets from every one pound of raw widgiteum, whereas previoulsy I only produced one widget for each pound of widgiteam, then I lower my costs of producing a widget. The cost which I charge for widgets is unaffected. Therefore, my profit, the difference between what I spend in producing a widget and what I earn from its sale, increases if I conserve resources.
This can apply to public goods such as the air and the oceans just as it can to exchangable goods such as steel and oil. For example, with air, all that is neccessary is to charge air polluters in proportion to how much pollution they release into the air. Doing that provides financial insentive to pollute less, in the same way that the cost of a good provides financial insentive to consume less of it. The profit motive can work to lower pollution. If it costs money to pollute, then the profifit motive works for the environment, not against it. For those who understand such terms, all that is necessary is that the government internalize exterternalities.
(which we're not going to get under undisputed reign of George II)
If you look at who lines up on the side of tradable pollution credits, a way of charging polluters according two how much they pollute, it is conservatives. If you look at who is against that, it is liberals.
Does anyone else get the impression that this will be yet another area where, yet again, corporate america is already WAY out in front of socialist Europe governments ? (or, if you live here, I guess you'd just call Corporate America "business" :) )
IBM made Linux adoption one of its top goals a few years ago and announce a billion dollar Linux budget. HP is in there also, having hired Bruce Perens, and hell, the great Linus himself was hired out of Europe by Corporate America. Intel was early with a Linux port to Itanium. Google runs on it. American corporations fab almost all CPUs on which Linux runs.
Therefore, in my mind, it makes perfect sense for a business (a private one at least) to setup it's IT infrastructure based around a platform created by volunteer programmers for any individual or institition willing to accept the terms of the GPL. Its a smart corporate strategy which lowers costs by reducing software licensing fees.
Europe is once again made look like a continent run by catch-up socialist regulators, who follow in distant pursuit of trends set by US corporations.
"However, I have a case against price discrimination, and that's because, in my own experience, most of the time it's unjust. I make about 20K$US/year in Finland (senior IT worker), while I would do in the range of 35-45 in UK, yet some stuff here is more expensive than in UK. Finland is actually one of the most expensive countries in Europe.
... unjust."
It gets even worse..."
Here are some other causes of regional price variation:
1. Variation in the costs of production. Some costs which vary geographically are:
a. Labor.
b. The cost of naturual resources owing to their unequal geographic distribution.
c. The rate of taxation.
3. Trade barriers such as tarrifs. Note that trade barriers are an instance of price fixing. Producers within a nation persuade their goverment to prevent importers from selling a good below the price at which domestic producers are willing to sell. They are price fixing; different producers agreeing to fix the price above a set minimum by banning from the market imports marked below that minimum.
How much each of those factors or others unmentioned contribute to the differences in prices which you cite we don't know. Before that is known, it seems incorrect to attribute your hardships to price discrimination.
To someone paid little but living in an expensive country, price discrimination should work to your benefit, not to your detriment. With price discrimination, the seller believes: "This potential customer is less able to pay the price which I am asking because he has a low income. To sell to him, it is necessary that I lower the price. However, If I do lower the price, then I will earn a smaller profit than when I sell the good for a higher price. But then, if I insisted on a high price, the potential customer would not purchase the good, and I would make no profit at all in a sale to him. A small profit is better than no profit, therefore I will lower my price for this person".
You might believe that is bad reasoning because by selling to you at a low price the seller is passing up the opportunity to sell to someone else willing to pay a higher price. In fact, the seller may have more goods on hand than than he can sell to other purchasers at higher prices.
To the extent that your own plight involves price discrimination, it might not result from from price discrimination, but from the imperfect practice of price discrimination. Sellers fail to identify you as someone less able to pay. That is becasue, when setting the price to you, they might rely on the crude measure of average national income as an indicator of your own income. If sellers actaully knew your income and used that knowldge to set the price, instead of relying on the national average income to infer your income, it would work out better for you and for them.
"price discrimination, [is] in my own experience, most of the time
Perhaps there are two statements in that:
1- Most of the time price discrimination is unjust.
2- In your own experience price discrimination is unjust.
If so, I would prefer to put this way:
If sellers set prices according to the average national income, then on average, and most of the time, price discrimination is "just". As someone whos own income differs from the average national income, in your experience price discrimination is "unjust."
You are also implying that it is an injustice for those with low sallaries to pay the same price as those with high sallaries. I agree that the less wealthy would be better off if they received a discount, but I am not willing to invoke the notion of justice in disaproval of equal prices. I only used the term "justice", to avoid a long discussion about what prices have to do with justice.
One more small comment which I find interesting: If you know that price discrimination benefits both the seller and those for whom he lowers his prices, then you can see through charitable price reductions to the selfish motives of the seller.
"I make about 20K$US/year in Finland (senior IT worker)"
From my perspective (New York City cost of living) that seems absurdly low for your job.
I make 70K$US/year before taxes + full medical benefits as a c/c++ programmer in New York, I think that's about normal here for that line of work, at least it was about two years ago when I took the job.
So a couple of years ago I wanted to take a vacation to Scandanavia with the woman I was dating then. She had a small income, she insisted that I not pay for everything, and she said the trip would be expensive. She lived in London. We went to Italy, I passing up the opportunity to experience the sales prices in Finland.
"you're forgetting something: No producer will ever sell a product at a loss."
1- I'm not forgetting that, I'm just not mentioning it becasue it has no implications for the issue of whether Nintendo or DVD region coding are instances of price discrimination, or for the ethicality of price discrimination.
2- It is not true that "No producer will ever sell a product at a loss." Producers will sell at the highest price they can, even if that price requires taking a loss. What they usually do not do is to produce a product with the intent to sell at a loss. Things like Xbox seem like a violation of that rule, but if you define the product as the Xbox+game software sales, then the rule holds.
"Price discrimination is attempting to partition a market for higher prices"
Right.
"such discrimination requires some sort of restraint of free trade."
If we can agree that free trade means that voluntary transactions, and only voluntary transactions are permitted, then: I can sell ice cream cones in the local market and haggle with each customer over price, charging different customers different prices. Each sale is a free trade, an exchange voluntarily agreed to by both parties. So here we have an example with price discrimination and with no restraint of free trade. Therefore, restraint of free trade is not required to practice price discrimination.
"Its hard to have price discrimination without either price fixing or a monopoly."
See the example above. No monopoly. No price fixing. Price discrimination.
So why doesn't price discrimination depend on coercive tactics ? Because some buyers will VOLUNTARILY pay more than others. In free markets, sellers have many ways of sorting buyers according to their willingness to pay, without resorting to coercive tactics which require monopoly or restraint of trade. One simple way is to sell at a high price first and then reduce the price when the inventory does not move. People who are willing to buy at the high price pay the high price. People who are not, wait for the low price.
"In the case of a monopoly (like those enforced by copyright), there is nothing to restrain the producer from abuse."
That's a statement about the power of monopolies. It does not say anything about price discrimination.
"Is it moral for the government to tax more from those who earn more? A person earnin g 50% more income could use fewer government services than one earning less."
I won't disucuss tax laws in moral terms. But a few comments on the subject of "tax[ing] more from those who earn more?"
- A flat income tax rate with no exemptions is the most effective form of that. Multiply your income by some fraction and give that much to the government. The current system of a progressive tax rate with exemptions permits substantial deviations from that. A progressive tax rate without exemptions is not politically feasible, I suspect.
- How is it better or worse than taxing more from those who spend more ?
I think that's a good point. A few comments in response:
I'm sticking with your earlier suggestion that region coding is price discrimination, I disagree that it is price fixing. As you observe, the usefulness of regional price discrimination as a strategy for raising the average sales price decreases as the variation in income levels within a region increases. However innefective, the practice is still price discrimination: charging different customers different prices for the identical product.
The MPAA, as a consortium, is in a good position to engage in price fixing and it might be doing that. I am not arguing that the MPAA does not engage in price fixing. I am making the narrower point that charging different buyers different prices does not constitute price fixing. Rather, different producers agreeing among themselves to not sell below a fixed minimum price is what constitutes price fixing. MPAA members could be doing that, I don't know.
Do I support price discrimination ? I would not say that I advocate it. I would only say that the idea that different buyers pay different prices for the identical good does not bother me.
Do I support price fixing ? No, I am against it. But it is like being against sickness, poverty and chronic drug addiction. Political disputes about such matters never involve "for" or "against" arguments, but rather questions of what are the most desirable means of prevention.
Anyway, I liked your point, so back to follow up on that: If the MPAA had made Albania a separate region then MPAA members could sell at lower prices more DVDs within that country, realizing higher revenues, while at the same time maintaining higher prices in wealthier parts of Europe, with no loss of revenues. Albanians would pay lower prices, so we could expect them to be for it.
So why didn't the MPAA make Albania a seperate region ? Maybe, the MPAA is limited to maintaining the same price within each political region. As with Nintendo, the EU would fine the MPAA if, as policy, it charged different prices in England than in Albania. The EU is a poltical body which polices uniform prices within the boundaries of Europe but not without. No authority would fine the MPAA if it charged different prices in England and Japan, because there is no body with political or legal authority within both of those countries. Hence England and Japan are seperate DVD regions but England and Albania are not.
If you believe a more sensible policy would be to sell DVDs to the Albanians for less than the price which the English are charged, then you are advocating price discrimination, the freedom of the producer to negotiate differnt prices for different customers.
The deal struck by the poorer countries within Europe with the wealther European nations, as a condition for EU membership, seems to be that the people of poor countries must pay the same prices as those in wealthy countries. Mario Monte proclaims it must be one price for all, which lowers the price to the wealthy and raises that to the poor.
I would guess that it is politically feasible only to enforce such a policy on luxery goods manufactured ouside of the EU, but I can't back that up with knowledge of prices there, I live in New York City and don't shop in Europe often.
I don't like with what the MPAA does with region coding. Not because I believe price discrimination is "unethical", but for these reasons instead:
-As a citizen of a wealthy country (US), I get charged more. This is purely financial selfishness on my part and I claim no moral right to a lower price.
-Though I do not believe that the MPAA's price discrimination itself is "unethical" I also do not agree with the means by which the MPAA guards that price discrimination scheme; by substantially violating of my intellectual freedom. Certainly in this forum it should not be necessary to elaborate on that statement.
I suspect the MPAA is exempt from any restrictions on price discrimination because within the jurisdiction of any one goverment, the MPAA charges the same price.
The Ninentendo case is an example of price discrimination not price fixing.
Price discrimination is when a single producer charges different customes different prices. Price fixing is when different producers agree to sell to all customers for the same price.
What followes is some detail on each and then some argumentation for why the ethical case against price discrimination generally is weak, without adressing the Nintendo case particularly.
Price fixing is an instance of collusion, where ostensibly competing producers negotiate an agreement to restrict price competetion between themselves. That is, producers agree not to sell their product for below some specified amount. The purpose of the agreement is to increase sales profits by rasing sales prices. Note that such agreements are always accompanied by another agreement about how producers divide up the market. Sometimes producers carve up the market geographically. For example, "You sell in Michigan and I'll sell in Ohio." Sometimes producers carve up the market by number of sales. "You won't sell more than x billion barrels of oil and I won't either."
OPEC is the quintessential example of a price fixing organization. Price fixing is its sole and explicit purpose. (OPEC can do this because it is an organization of governments, and there exists no super-governmental body to place on governments the same rules by which those nations govern their citizens.)
Price discrimination, on the other hand, is a pricing strategy of a lone seller for raising profits on sales without organizing agreements with his competitors. For each buyer, the seller attempts to negotiate the maximum price that buyer will pay. For the seller, this stragy works to raise net sales income above what would be obtained with a one-price-for-all strategy.
The moral case against is price discrimination is pretty weak for these reasons:
-Because richer customers are willing to pay more, in practice price discimination amounts to giving poorer customers a break on price. It places the costs of production more heavely on those who can best afford them. If you look at Nintendo's pricing scheme, I would predict you find that Nintendo charged more in richer countries and less in poorer countries.
-Most people don't regard price discrimination as unethical. There are plenty of examples which demonstrate how this is cool with most people. Like Priceline's "Name your own price". Or the bazaar, where buyers and sellers haggle over prices, the buyer attempting to determine the lowest price at which the seller will part with a good and the seller trying to find the highest price which the buyer is willing to pay. There is no guarantee or even an expectation that such a system will result in the same price for each customer, and that's just cool with everyone.
-With progressive taxation, tax payers are assessed different fees according to their ability to pay. With price discrimination, buyers pay different fees according to their willingness to pay. Goverments make the "Different people pay different amounts" argument in the case of taxation. However, the argue against "different people pay different amounts" in the case of private sales. The reason for the contradictory approaches is that with taxation, goverment is as the recipient of tax revenues adopts the strategy which maximizes those revenues. In the case of corporate sales, they have little such insentive. My point here is not that one or the other is eithically correct, but that it is difficult to make the ethical case for one as you engage in the other.
With price discrimination, the rich lose out becasue sellers can exploit their willingness to pay more than the poor. Mario Monte stands for their interets here.
Policing the content before they agree to sell it potentially gives WalMart an un-acceptable degree of control over what information is available, and how it is presented.
1) The writer does not state that Wal-Mart exercises "an un-acceptable degree of control" He states that Wal-Mart has the "potential" to exercise such control. Speaking of potentials allows him to associate with Wal-Mart a harmful act, when in fact none has occurred; He portrays Wal-mart unfavorably by accusing it of having the "potential" to censor, not of having censored.
We could contrive similar unfair accusations against the writer himself. "As the purchaser of a kitchen knife, he has the potential to murder every member of his household in their sleep." Or "As the owner of penis, he has the potential to rape children". These "potentials" for harm do not express a liklyhood of harm, or even allow its possibility, given unstated constraints. Yet such statements are indisputably factually correct in the abstract sense that stabbing is one among many possible uses of a knife.
The point is not that the writer is likely to kill or rape, but rather that such accusations of a "potential" are distinct from, and in no way constitute, actual harm or even the threat of harm.
2) The writer uses the term "policing" to denote a voluntary agreement between magazine publishers and Wal-Mart; publishers choose to respond to Wal-Mart's interests in restricting magazine content, expressed in advance of publication, in return for some assurance that Wal-mart will retail their publication after publication. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement; publishers can improve their chances of selling magazines and Wal-mart can make available more products satisfying its standards. In comparison, A police action is and act of coercive control. Those being policed are subject to involuntary control, and have no say whether to participate in being "policed". When we do have a say, then it is incorrect to use the term "policed." Policing is essentially involuntary on the part of those policed. The relationship between Wal-mart and publishers is voluntary. The writer has chosen a word opposite in meaning to the actual situation.
3) The writer is obsessed alone with Wal-Mart's influence on magazine content. Yet the content of every publication is controlled. Readers, in deciding what to purchase, exercise some control over what is published. Writers, in choosing what to write, exercise control. Advertisers, in negotiating the purchase of ad placement and price, exercise control. Editors control by selecting what is published, and publishers exert control by hiring and firing editors. The choice of what to publish is the outcome of the cooperative engagment of several parties with variously united and opposing interests. Wal-mart is one among many parties exercising influence over the content of magazines sold it its stores. The writer alleges without reason that Wal-mart's influence alone should be suppressed.
4) The writer claims that Wal-mart has the potential for an "un-acceptable degree of control". Yet he has not told us what degree of control Wal-Mart potentially has, nor what degree of control he deems acceptable. He is comparing two unstated magnitudes. He says: The degree of control > the acceptable degree of control. Symbolically, X > Y. What's X ? He doesn't know. What's Y ? He doesn't know. Nontheless he's darn sure that X is greater than Y.
5) The writer argues against an extreme "degree of control", yet he is incorrect to assume that an extreme degree of control is socially undesirable. An absolute ban on some material constitues extreme control and yet could be beneficial. Many would agree that forbidding child pornogrphy and pro-Nazi endorsements might be socially beneficial acts. The point is not that Wal-mart will always use its powers for good, nor in all cases will there be common agreement about what subject material is suitable for sale in a family-oriented store such as Wal-mart. Rather, the point is that the disirability of control is not specified by the degree of control. Extreme control can be viewed fovorably in one instance and unfavorably in another.
6)The writer fails to mention that Wal-Mart exerts control only over magazines sold in its store. Instead, the unqualified, sweeping phrase " degree of control over what information is available," is used, as if its control encompassed all information released upon society. In fact Wal-Mart can exert no influece over magazines which it does not carry.
Who elected WalMart to the position of official censor?
1) As stated above, Wal-Mart is one of many parties with influence over the content of the magazines which appear on its shevles. The only single parties with absolute power to restric content are governmental.
2) Freedom of expression has two parts. i)The freedom to choose what statements we endorse and promote. ii) The freedom to choose not to endorse or promote statements with which we disagree.
The writer opposes freedom of expression by advocating that Wal-mart be compelled to promote views which it opposes. Wal-Mart exercises its freedom of expression by excluding from its store shelves material which it does not wish to promote. By labelling Wal-Mart a "censor" the writer incorrectly identifies Wal-Mart as oppsing freedom of expression. In fact, it is the writer who opposes freedom of expression in seeking to deny Wal-Mart influence in restricting the content of magazines sold in its stores.
The crucial point is that compelling any organization to promote a view with which it disagrees violates an essential freedom. Wal-mart exersizes freedom and the writer opposes that.
What if the Waltons decide that they really don't like abortion, and pressure magazines to adjust their content accordingly.
1) From the writer's point of view, freedom should be prohibited becasue if organizations are given freedom to express and promote their own beliefs, they might use that freedom to promote views with which he disagrees. As an example, he sites the possibility that Wal-Mart could advance one specific point of view which he opposes, restrictions on abortion.
2) One might just as well as well ask what would happen if the Waltons decided that they wanted to raise money for cancer research, and influenced magazines to encourage contributions to medical research. The point here is not that the Walton's are any more likely to use their powers for good than for evil. Rather, the point is that because either possibility exists, the power to influence is not inherently bad.
I suspect that if it were microsoft pressuring MSNBC to present the Beast in a more favourable light, the howls of outrage would be deafening.
1) A comparable comparison is
Wal-Mart pressuring publications to portray Wal-Mart favorably
Microsoft pressuring MSNBC to portray Wal-Mart favorably.
We have no evidence that Wal-mart is pressuing publications to portray Wal-Mart favorably. It is therefore easy to explain why Wal-Mart has not been subject to the "howls of outrage "which we expect Micrsoft would recieve; it has not engaged in a comparable misdeed.
"77,000 BTU of energy requires inputs totalling about 131,000 BTU (if memory serves)."
I store this factoid in a more compact form, that the fuel consumed in the production of ethanol contains 1.7 times the enery as the ethanol. Which fits with the figures you give.
By the way, those who can not obtain ethanol fuel at the pump can simulate the experience of driving on a gallon of ethanol using regular fossil fuel:
1- Purchase 1.7 gallons of gasoline.
2- Poor 1 gallon into your tank.
3- Poor the remaining 0.7 gallons into nearby ditch. Ignite.
Those after a more realistic experience can also send ADM a check, cut down trees and dump topsoil into a river. If anyone questions you, denounce them as a corporate whore of the fossil fuel industry then move to Nebraska and vote for Tom Daschle.
ore C02 == more plants, ergo drive a car to save a tree.
Boosting CO2 levels does fertilize plants, just as does adding nutrients to the soil. They grow faster. I'm not sure that promoting tree growth is the same thing as saving a tree. You don't have more trees, you have more tree. Bigger trees, not more of them. But in my opinion any reasonable reader would grant you license with that, the distinction isn't relevent if the goal is more plant growth.
The notion that the side-effects of human activity can be beneficial to nature as well as harmful is unconventional, but certainly not incorrect. It contradicts liberal envronmentalist dogma, and I suspect that has something to do with why you were moderated down. Bummer.
Environmental zealotry and religious zealotry share epistemologies. Consider the following:
If you don't think global warming is real, great, PROVE IT!
If you don't think God is real, great, PROVE IT!
The epistemological case against this type of argumentation has been well made. In a nutshell, anyone who insists that something must exist because you can't prove that it doesn't is full of shit. James "The Amazing" Randy, arch debunker of the paranormal, presents clear arguments for this. For deep thought on the merits of falsifyability see Karl Popper.
Is it not possible to be right wing and concerned about the environment?
Yes it is possible. See: Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Envrironmentalists a Conservative Manifesto by Peter Huber.
The author has an engineering degree from MIT and a law degree from Harvard. His engineering background comes through in the writing. Highly recommended reading, even if you are inclinded to disagree with it.