Yes, price spiders are good for consumers. But I think you're confusing retailers (who sell convenience) with manufacturers. Perfect competition is not simply an product of perfect information.
Perfect competition assumes that every competitor has the same product -- all VCRs made by all firms are the same, etc. In the "real world", as you put it, products are differentiated, that's why the model is closer to monopolistic competition than perfect competition, and why the same technology (VCRs) can be sold for different prices, because each brand is slightly different than another (e.g. Sony vs Hitachi). If people had perfect information, *and* all products were exactly the same, then anyone that charged a higher price would be unable to sell any of the goods they produced.
Sony spends a lot of money differentiating itself and establishing a name and association with quality, and that's why it can charge a higher price for its products and people will buy it.
Perfect competition is really a reference to efficiency -- the goal (as you state) of the invisible hand is to make products cost as much at market as they do to produce. In nonopolistic competition however there are still and will always be wasted resources because the firms are spending money on advertising to differentiate themselves, thereby inflating the prices of their products. In perfect competition all resources would go towards the creation of the output, and economic profits would be zero.
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The patent system may be stupid, but he ain't if he made $29.5 million!
All it did was put 'WinFS' in the title, then proceed to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the other, existing file system.
It had no new information on WinFS whatsoever.
Useless.
Yes, price spiders are good for consumers. But I think you're confusing retailers (who sell convenience) with manufacturers. Perfect competition is not simply an product of perfect information.
Perfect competition assumes that every competitor has the same product -- all VCRs made by all firms are the same, etc. In the "real world", as you put it, products are differentiated, that's why the model is closer to monopolistic competition than perfect competition, and why the same technology (VCRs) can be sold for different prices, because each brand is slightly different than another (e.g. Sony vs Hitachi). If people had perfect information, *and* all products were exactly the same, then anyone that charged a higher price would be unable to sell any of the goods they produced.
Sony spends a lot of money differentiating itself and establishing a name and association with quality, and that's why it can charge a higher price for its products and people will buy it.
Perfect competition is really a reference to efficiency -- the goal (as you state) of the invisible hand is to make products cost as much at market as they do to produce. In nonopolistic competition however there are still and will always be wasted resources because the firms are spending money on advertising to differentiate themselves, thereby inflating the prices of their products. In perfect competition all resources would go towards the creation of the output, and economic profits would be zero.