So, I can bitch about every message I get, even the legitimate ones, and expect to get a refund?
Sure, if you don't mind your friends being investigated and yourself possibly going to jail for fraud.
As long as the phone company isn't going to block senders you bitch about, they stand to lose as much money as they'd lose if you just turn the phone off.
Theoretically it's possible I guess. But that's a risk I'd surely be willing to take. How much do you think they actually pay for sending you an SMS message? Virtually nothing, especially since when the lines are too busy they can just delay the message. You've seen messages which arrive hours or even days later, or never at all, haven't you?
Not everyone has said that. I don't see any problem with SMS spam. Even if there are peering arrangements it's still not as bad as email as far as anonymity. If a peer starts forwarding lots of SMS spam to your users then you tell the peer to pay up or you drop the peering arrangement. The fact that you could force people to pay for sending SMS messages is exactly the reason that you don't have to. If you can get them to pay to send SMS messages, why not only make them pay if they send SMS spam, and make them pay dearly?
Yeah, it's their problem, and they came up with their solution. Make the recipient pay, and give them a refund if they bitch. Cell phone providers don't care about perfection. Whatever the most profitable solution is, that's what they're going to do.
The problem is that you receive it live. I have my morning "update the junklist, delete the spam" ritual in the office for email, if I receieved that crap as it was sent I'd have 20 little interruptions instead of just one large one.
I seriously doubt that SMS spam is going to become that big of a problem. It's a lot different from email, because it's a centralized system. You can be sure that any spammer sending thousands of messages a day through a cell phone company is going to get slapped down hard. And that's only if they manage to get through the IP address blocks which are so easy to put in place.
I screen all calls on my home phone and don't have a mobile because of this very problem.
Because of a problem with SMS? Is this a real problem, or just a hypothetical that you've thought up? I've never received an SMS spam.
Well let's see if you're still saying that in a years time when the scumbags cotton on to the fact they can send junk to your phone for nothing.
Well, they can't. At least not legally.
It's so obviously a bad idea I can't believe you're actually trying to defend your phone company charging YOU for the pleasure of receiving crap.
No. I will most certainly refuse to pay for these messages. Besides, I get 300/month or whatever free.
The sh*tbags that push junk mail/spam only do so since it's a cheap racket for them to make some fast cash. If they had to pay for each email/text message, they'd move on to conning little old ladies or some other scummy occupation.
Please. No one has made any money off SMS spam. Don't fill people's brains with such ideas that they might.
In price fixing, a group of companies competing against each other will agree that despite their competition they will still set a minimum price for consumers; thus artificially raising the market price.
Isn't that group of companies acting as an oligopoly? Isn't an oligopoly just another form of monoply power?
Infinity, Clear Channel, and that other one (I forget) are able to monopolize radio markets and raise the barriers to entry. In this case, a group of companies share monopoly power cooperatively and engage in price fixing.
I'd rather have it free and receive spam once in a while. What's the point of SMS if you have to pay? I'll just call the person using my free mobile-to-mobile minutes.
I find it extremely useful the way it is in europe and using SMS for 5 years now i have received 1 (read: ONE) SMS-Spam as far as i can remember that and this is definitely due to the fact, that the sender has to pay for it!
I've used SMS in the US for 3 years now and I have received 0 (read: ZERO) SMS-Spam and this is definately not due to the fact thta the sender has to pay for it, since they don't!
You're honestly asking how a mobile phone user could pay to send an SMS message (data) when they already pay to make calls (more data).
No, I'm saying if you make the sender pay, then you're taking away a key feature of the service.
You bill them per message - it's what we all do in Europe and it makes SMS spam prohibitively expensive (not to mention the fact it's also illegal and carries huge penalties now).
Europe's SMS is significantly less useful than the US.
How are you supposed to do that if the sender doesn't send the SMS through the phone?
If you're trying to tell me that you can't send SMS messages through methods other than through a phone, then you've already solved spam to begin with. No ones going to sit there typing 99966688#888333112233#3366117777#726#633#3 50,000 times.
In respect to the ZPC, I have to agree with you. I do have some problems with ZPC's practicality. I'm really adament that industry-wide price fixing invalidates the condition.
But you can't fix prices unless you have some sort of monopoly power, right?
I'm going to give up on this one. I'm not sure I really have the vocabulary to explain what I'm getting at. Looking back, this all started when shepd said that businesses get compensated so much because running a business is "scary and risky." I agree that that is part of it, and in theory that's essentially all of it, but in reality that's just not the truth. Businesses get compensated so much because there are high barriers to entry to just about any profitable business, and many if not most of these barriers to entry are introduced by the government. Just look at some of the most profitable businesses in your state. Alcohol, tobacco, banking, insurance, casinos, telephone services, fuel, real estate. It's all highly profitable, and it's all highly regulated. I'd love to own a business in any of those industries, especially banking.
I don't know how to explain it, but I always looked it as related to monopoly power.
That obviously wouldn't work with this. Of course, your first 300 incoming messages with verizon are free. And I'm sure verizon would be willing to drop the charges if you told them you were sent these messages without your permission.
Because people want to allow SMS messages from people who don't have an account with your cell phone company (or any cell phone company, for that matter). Someone has to pay, and the phone company can't collect from the sender, so they collect from the recipient.
If you don't want to pay for this, I'm sure you can call your phone company and have them shut it off. And I bet if you complained about these messages being sent without your permission, you'd be able to get the charges taken off (at least for the first month, after that you better turn it off if you don't want it).
Give every 3rd world family a TV, a car, and central heat/air conditioning. What happens to the world economy?
I don't know, cause I don't have a TV, car, or central heat/air conditioning to give every 3rd world family. Hell, I don't have central heat/air conditioning for myself.
As for the oceans, they're a bit busy creating 1/3 of the world's usable oxygen. If you were to cover them with solar cells, we might have more energy but we'd likely die from lack of oxygen.
So cover half of them. And plant a few million trees. And stop burning oil. There is plenty of energy hitting the earth. Energy is not the problem. Harnessing that energy is the problem.
Don't be a twit.
You're the one making asinine statements without backing them up.
No, It is true that monopolies can develop once a business achieves economies of scale, it is not true that monopolies stem from them. You have to understand what monopolies are in terms of economics, not in terms of the most hated company in your industry.
I'm using terms a little loosely, so I'll clarify. When I said that economies of scale are what cause monopolies, what I mean is that econmies of scale cause a company to have monopoly power. There may be three, or four companies involved, but together they are able to shut out the little guy. This allows them to set their prices above the equilibrium point, and that's how profits are made.
No, you're incorrect. in a competitive market, businesses can and do earn profits without monopolistic behavior. Competing businesses who attempt to compete on price will lower prices based on the minimum profit they are willing to accept before exiting the competitive market. A business would not continue to lower its prices until it reaches marginal return on investment as it would remove the incentive to participate.
But in a completely competitive market, a business would continue to lowers its prices until its profits were down to just a fraction of a penny. As long as there's that fraction of a penny of profit potential, there is incentive to participate.
Go make some lawn furniture and sell it at $1.00 over cost. Continue to do so, and see how long you'll be willing to continue.
As a business, I'm willing to continue indefinately. As an individual I'm not, because I'm forced to do labor. But businesses hire other people to do the labor, and that is part of the cost.
I'm glossing over the opportunity cost of the capital here, but I did mention in a previous post that a business will make a certain profit equivalent to an interest rate that would be received on any other equally risky investment.
Yes, I know quite a bit about supply and demand curves; Unfortunately, Wikipedia's 1 page long web definition of the subject wasn't my teacher.
I don't know. Maybe I was just tired last night and didn't read you right, but I just got the impression that you had no idea what you were talking about. I didn't learn economics from Wikipedia either, but it seemed like a good simple primer for someone who had never seen a supply or demand curve before. Anyway, my apologies.
I will say that you are wrong in saying that a monopolist has no incentive to compete.
Perhaps this was also a misunderstanding. Clearly a monopolist has incentive to compete in order to maintain his monopoly. But a monopolist does not have incentive to have competition.
A monopolist has the incentive because monopolies are inefficient at maximizing profits.
OK, you lost me there.
A monopolist's marginal revenue is always less than the price of its good.
Every (non-colluding) business always has a marginal revenue less than the price of its good. If the marginal revenue were greater than the price of the good, then the business would be able to lower prices and make a greater profit.
If an automobile is inherently inefficient, then why do people use them?
They don't care about efficiency. That doesn't mean it's not important.
Efficiency affects price, and people most certainly care about price.
Valuing immediate convenience over long-term sustainability isn't stupid?
Not always.
Automobiles are more convenient. You don't have to plan your schedule with hundreds of other people. You leave when you want. You return when you want.
With a GOOD mass transit system, these are non-issues. You leave when you want, you return when you want.
If you leave when you want and return when you want, then it's not mass transit. But let's put it this way: if you have designed a GOOD mass transit system which is just as convenient as automobiles and still gets people where they want when they want, you should build this system and make billions.
Take the population of the 1st world and how much energy it consumes. Now project how much energy would be needed if *everyone* was in the first world. There just isn't enough to do it right now.
There isn't enough where? There's plenty of energy hitting the earth, if you count the oceans.
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So, I can bitch about every message I get, even the legitimate ones, and expect to get a refund?
Sure, if you don't mind your friends being investigated and yourself possibly going to jail for fraud.
As long as the phone company isn't going to block senders you bitch about, they stand to lose as much money as they'd lose if you just turn the phone off.
Theoretically it's possible I guess. But that's a risk I'd surely be willing to take. How much do you think they actually pay for sending you an SMS message? Virtually nothing, especially since when the lines are too busy they can just delay the message. You've seen messages which arrive hours or even days later, or never at all, haven't you?
Not everyone has said that. I don't see any problem with SMS spam. Even if there are peering arrangements it's still not as bad as email as far as anonymity. If a peer starts forwarding lots of SMS spam to your users then you tell the peer to pay up or you drop the peering arrangement. The fact that you could force people to pay for sending SMS messages is exactly the reason that you don't have to. If you can get them to pay to send SMS messages, why not only make them pay if they send SMS spam, and make them pay dearly?
Yeah, it's their problem, and they came up with their solution. Make the recipient pay, and give them a refund if they bitch. Cell phone providers don't care about perfection. Whatever the most profitable solution is, that's what they're going to do.
The person stated that enough energy does not hit the earth.
The problem is that you receive it live. I have my morning "update the junklist, delete the spam" ritual in the office for email, if I receieved that crap as it was sent I'd have 20 little interruptions instead of just one large one.
I seriously doubt that SMS spam is going to become that big of a problem. It's a lot different from email, because it's a centralized system. You can be sure that any spammer sending thousands of messages a day through a cell phone company is going to get slapped down hard. And that's only if they manage to get through the IP address blocks which are so easy to put in place.
I screen all calls on my home phone and don't have a mobile because of this very problem.
Because of a problem with SMS? Is this a real problem, or just a hypothetical that you've thought up? I've never received an SMS spam.
Well let's see if you're still saying that in a years time when the scumbags cotton on to the fact they can send junk to your phone for nothing.
Well, they can't. At least not legally.
It's so obviously a bad idea I can't believe you're actually trying to defend your phone company charging YOU for the pleasure of receiving crap.
No. I will most certainly refuse to pay for these messages. Besides, I get 300/month or whatever free.
The sh*tbags that push junk mail/spam only do so since it's a cheap racket for them to make some fast cash. If they had to pay for each email/text message, they'd move on to conning little old ladies or some other scummy occupation.
Please. No one has made any money off SMS spam. Don't fill people's brains with such ideas that they might.
In price fixing, a group of companies competing against each other will agree that despite their competition they will still set a minimum price for consumers; thus artificially raising the market price.
Isn't that group of companies acting as an oligopoly? Isn't an oligopoly just another form of monoply power?
Infinity, Clear Channel, and that other one (I forget) are able to monopolize radio markets and raise the barriers to entry. In this case, a group of companies share monopoly power cooperatively and engage in price fixing.
I guess that answers my question. :)
I'd rather have it free and receive spam once in a while. What's the point of SMS if you have to pay? I'll just call the person using my free mobile-to-mobile minutes.
I find it extremely useful the way it is in europe and using SMS for 5 years now i have received 1 (read: ONE) SMS-Spam as far as i can remember that and this is definitely due to the fact, that the sender has to pay for it!
I've used SMS in the US for 3 years now and I have received 0 (read: ZERO) SMS-Spam and this is definately not due to the fact thta the sender has to pay for it, since they don't!
You pay to send SMSs? That's messed up.
You're honestly asking how a mobile phone user could pay to send an SMS message (data) when they already pay to make calls (more data).
No, I'm saying if you make the sender pay, then you're taking away a key feature of the service.
You bill them per message - it's what we all do in Europe and it makes SMS spam prohibitively expensive (not to mention the fact it's also illegal and carries huge penalties now).
Europe's SMS is significantly less useful than the US.
No, you add $0.10 to the sender's phone bill.
How are you supposed to do that if the sender doesn't send the SMS through the phone?
If you're trying to tell me that you can't send SMS messages through methods other than through a phone, then you've already solved spam to begin with. No ones going to sit there typing 99966688#888333112233#3366117777#726#633#3 50,000 times.
In respect to the ZPC, I have to agree with you. I do have some problems with ZPC's practicality. I'm really adament that industry-wide price fixing invalidates the condition.
But you can't fix prices unless you have some sort of monopoly power, right?
I'm going to give up on this one. I'm not sure I really have the vocabulary to explain what I'm getting at. Looking back, this all started when shepd said that businesses get compensated so much because running a business is "scary and risky." I agree that that is part of it, and in theory that's essentially all of it, but in reality that's just not the truth. Businesses get compensated so much because there are high barriers to entry to just about any profitable business, and many if not most of these barriers to entry are introduced by the government. Just look at some of the most profitable businesses in your state. Alcohol, tobacco, banking, insurance, casinos, telephone services, fuel, real estate. It's all highly profitable, and it's all highly regulated. I'd love to own a business in any of those industries, especially banking.
I don't know how to explain it, but I always looked it as related to monopoly power.
That's pretty anecdotal. I live in the US (where supposedly there is a problem), and I've never received an SMS spam either.
Now, in Houston, if my girlfriend dumped me, I could amuse myself for hours sending her 100s of SMSs, and racking up a great big for her. Wheeeeeee!
Yeah, and you could go to jail too. Wheeeeeee!
What if you don't have an account?
That obviously wouldn't work with this. Of course, your first 300 incoming messages with verizon are free. And I'm sure verizon would be willing to drop the charges if you told them you were sent these messages without your permission.
Make the sender pay with what? A $0.05 credit card charge? Mail them a bill? Require them to establish an account beforehand?
If you make the sender pay, then you're severely reducing the usefulness of the service.
Why do we have to pay for incoming anything?
Because people want to allow SMS messages from people who don't have an account with your cell phone company (or any cell phone company, for that matter). Someone has to pay, and the phone company can't collect from the sender, so they collect from the recipient.
If you don't want to pay for this, I'm sure you can call your phone company and have them shut it off. And I bet if you complained about these messages being sent without your permission, you'd be able to get the charges taken off (at least for the first month, after that you better turn it off if you don't want it).
Give every 3rd world family a TV, a car, and central heat/air conditioning. What happens to the world economy?
I don't know, cause I don't have a TV, car, or central heat/air conditioning to give every 3rd world family. Hell, I don't have central heat/air conditioning for myself.
As for the oceans, they're a bit busy creating 1/3 of the world's usable oxygen. If you were to cover them with solar cells, we might have more energy but we'd likely die from lack of oxygen.
So cover half of them. And plant a few million trees. And stop burning oil. There is plenty of energy hitting the earth. Energy is not the problem. Harnessing that energy is the problem.
Don't be a twit.
You're the one making asinine statements without backing them up.
No, It is true that monopolies can develop once a business achieves economies of scale, it is not true that monopolies stem from them. You have to understand what monopolies are in terms of economics, not in terms of the most hated company in your industry.
I'm using terms a little loosely, so I'll clarify. When I said that economies of scale are what cause monopolies, what I mean is that econmies of scale cause a company to have monopoly power. There may be three, or four companies involved, but together they are able to shut out the little guy. This allows them to set their prices above the equilibrium point, and that's how profits are made.
No, you're incorrect. in a competitive market, businesses can and do earn profits without monopolistic behavior. Competing businesses who attempt to compete on price will lower prices based on the minimum profit they are willing to accept before exiting the competitive market. A business would not continue to lower its prices until it reaches marginal return on investment as it would remove the incentive to participate.
But in a completely competitive market, a business would continue to lowers its prices until its profits were down to just a fraction of a penny. As long as there's that fraction of a penny of profit potential, there is incentive to participate.
Go make some lawn furniture and sell it at $1.00 over cost. Continue to do so, and see how long you'll be willing to continue.
As a business, I'm willing to continue indefinately. As an individual I'm not, because I'm forced to do labor. But businesses hire other people to do the labor, and that is part of the cost.
I'm glossing over the opportunity cost of the capital here, but I did mention in a previous post that a business will make a certain profit equivalent to an interest rate that would be received on any other equally risky investment.
Yes, I know quite a bit about supply and demand curves; Unfortunately, Wikipedia's 1 page long web definition of the subject wasn't my teacher.
I don't know. Maybe I was just tired last night and didn't read you right, but I just got the impression that you had no idea what you were talking about. I didn't learn economics from Wikipedia either, but it seemed like a good simple primer for someone who had never seen a supply or demand curve before. Anyway, my apologies.
I will say that you are wrong in saying that a monopolist has no incentive to compete.
Perhaps this was also a misunderstanding. Clearly a monopolist has incentive to compete in order to maintain his monopoly. But a monopolist does not have incentive to have competition.
A monopolist has the incentive because monopolies are inefficient at maximizing profits.
OK, you lost me there.
A monopolist's marginal revenue is always less than the price of its good.
Every (non-colluding) business always has a marginal revenue less than the price of its good. If the marginal revenue were greater than the price of the good, then the business would be able to lower prices and make a greater profit.
If an automobile is inherently inefficient, then why do people use them?
They don't care about efficiency. That doesn't mean it's not important.
Efficiency affects price, and people most certainly care about price.
Valuing immediate convenience over long-term sustainability isn't stupid?
Not always.
Automobiles are more convenient. You don't have to plan your schedule with hundreds of other people. You leave when you want. You return when you want.
With a GOOD mass transit system, these are non-issues. You leave when you want, you return when you want.
If you leave when you want and return when you want, then it's not mass transit. But let's put it this way: if you have designed a GOOD mass transit system which is just as convenient as automobiles and still gets people where they want when they want, you should build this system and make billions.
Take the population of the 1st world and how much energy it consumes. Now project how much energy would be needed if *everyone* was in the first world. There just isn't enough to do it right now.
There isn't enough where? There's plenty of energy hitting the earth, if you count the oceans.
I hate to break it to you, but bicycling produces carbon dioxide. And it uses biomass as a fuel.
Maybe the reason why "it's barely worth it" is because the welfare system pays more than a job.
For better or worse, that's certainly part of it.