6 ms·

Amazon does exactly the same thing though: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/cheap-words http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/cheap-words (fo

Amazon does exactly the same thing though: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/cheap-words http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/17/cheap-words (focusing specifically on books, but they do it across all sectors)

mschuster91 9y ago
When companies are able to do this, they should be broken up, period. Unfortunately we are in a system that's essentially the worst of capitalism with none of the good (and especially not with regulations), so there is no hope left and more jobs will migrate to China. That's what Trump should tackle if he wants to stop job migration, but it seems like he's focused on anything but regulating BigCos.
- Kocrachon 9y ago
  Amazon has been forcing cheaper books back when it was mainly a book store. What do you do about something like that? Back when Barnes and Noble was the big book store, same thing, they pressured better prices. What do you do, split up the book store into two companies, who still control the same market share and will both still put pressure on the book companies? Last I read, Amazon mainly fights for cheaper kindle prices, because it's considerably cheaper to sell a 12 meg file than a 200 page physical book. Which I agree with publishers, only benefits Amazon and not entirely fair, but for the most part, not much ahs changed, most kindle copies are MAYBE a dollar less.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Amazon has been forcing cheaper books back when it was mainly a book store. What do you do about something like that? In Germany, book prices are regulated: the printer sets the price, and the price the customer pays must be this price. Only exception are damaged (e.g. books with CD-ROM, but the CD is missing) or used books. The prices the retailers have to pay at the printer are of course different and may well be based on the # of books the retailer has purchased, but the system right now successfully prevents price wars. And yes, I am happy with that, because it ensures that authors get proper funding instead of having to fight for the scraps. > Last I read, Amazon mainly fights for cheaper kindle prices, because it's considerably cheaper to sell a 12 meg file than a 200 page physical book The printing and distribution costs of a book are not that high, once you have a significant enough mass of books. What Amazon wants to do here is squeeze the authors off their profit, and this must be prevented. Books are culture, and culture must not be bowing to the demands of predatory capitalism or else we'll sooner or later live in a Idiocracy world with a movie called "*ss" the sole Oscar winner... (okay, that was an exaggeration, but still, it's a danger to culture!)
    - Kocrachon 9y ago
      While it seems ideal, I don't like the idea of consumer goods being regulated outside of groceries and other necessities. My Raptor romance novel should not be 'regulated'.
      - KirinDave 9y ago
        I suspect the author of a successful novel hopes for some form of regulation to help guarantee revenue from the effort.
        Kocrachon 9y ago
        Can't that be said for every goods manufacturer? That would be like saying their needs to be regulation on the price of DVDs. Should we eliminate the 1 dollar DVD bin at WalMart now?
    - taeric 9y ago
      I'm highly skeptical of the claim that printing and distribution costs are not that high. I get that they are not a high part of most publishers margins, but isn't that mainly because they have already invested in the infrastructure necessary to do these things. I would guess at a long timeline for deprecation write offs. This does not make them cheap, by any measure. (Indeed, just try printing a few thousand copies of a book personally, and see how small of a part of your margins this would be.) Same is similarly true for ebook distribution. It isn't like the infrastructure to do that at scale is free, either. Both in technical of copying the bits around, and in the physical of authors/editors/etc. However, I fail to see any way in which the advantages do not weigh in on the ebook side heavily.
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      Copyright is the much larger "danger to culture". We invented it to try to keep artistic recompense safe, but like most idealistic propositions, the sharks have moved in and gamed it and now we are all worse off. Allowing anyone to make any type of contribution without fear of a crackdown from Big Legal leads to a much more prosperous culture. This is already becoming reality as the internet has made traditional copyright completely unenforceable on the general population. For example, Adobe no longer sells Photoshop as a standalone unit, but as an ongoing subscription, which gives the impression that the vendor is an active participant in usage.
- randcraw 9y ago
  I've long wondered, with the rise of the internet, is prosecution really necessary to address unsavory business practices like these? Why not force the company into the light, posting this information in a useful form that informs the public and shames the malefactor? I'm a strong proponent of open <EVERYTHING>. If shady behavior arises in business, government, public services, and even public discourse, I'd love to see a moderated form of public disclosure become the standard way to reveal and address such 'discrepancies'. Now that the 'net is ubiquitous, I don't see why age-old small town arbitration principles can't be applied to redress virtually all forms of grievance, as long as the public exchange is conducted decorously, as a judge or strict moderator rules could ensure. IMO, the state of AI is getting pretty close to enabling this sort of moderator service, making it impossible for 'conduct unbecoming' to persist out of the public eye. What cellphone videos are doing to police/perp misbehavior ought to be possible for general business practices too.
  - johncolanduoni 9y ago
    Because ultimately most people won't care enough to stop going with the cheaper option, especially when all you can point to is negative effects for vendors. It's not like Amazon is going around creating spurious libel lawsuits against people for publishing criticism of their business practices, or paying for people to muddy the waters with counter-articles. It's just that the information largely fall on deaf ears. I'm not sure what a judge or moderator would do when there's no real back and forth. A lot of conduct unbecoming like this becomes public (Intel is a good example). How many people stopped buying their products even with literal judges finding them guilty of some particularly nasty anti-competitive practices?
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      > Because ultimately most people won't care enough to stop going with the cheaper option, especially when all you can point to is negative effects for vendors. Indeed. If people could get cheaper clothing if slavery was made legal again, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Witness to a lesser extent the general sentiment on HN that Uber is "helping drivers", when they're indentured servants. I wouldn't call it consumer excess when you're exploiting someone with limited options.

mschuster91 9y ago

When companies are able to do this, they should be broken up, period. Unfortunately we are in a system that's essentially the worst of capitalism with none of the good (and especially not with regulations), so there is no hope left and more jobs will migrate to China. That's what Trump should tackle if he wants to stop job migration, but it seems like he's focused on anything but regulating BigCos.

Kocrachon 9y ago
Amazon has been forcing cheaper books back when it was mainly a book store. What do you do about something like that? Back when Barnes and Noble was the big book store, same thing, they pressured better prices. What do you do, split up the book store into two companies, who still control the same market share and will both still put pressure on the book companies? Last I read, Amazon mainly fights for cheaper kindle prices, because it's considerably cheaper to sell a 12 meg file than a 200 page physical book. Which I agree with publishers, only benefits Amazon and not entirely fair, but for the most part, not much ahs changed, most kindle copies are MAYBE a dollar less.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Amazon has been forcing cheaper books back when it was mainly a book store. What do you do about something like that? In Germany, book prices are regulated: the printer sets the price, and the price the customer pays must be this price. Only exception are damaged (e.g. books with CD-ROM, but the CD is missing) or used books. The prices the retailers have to pay at the printer are of course different and may well be based on the # of books the retailer has purchased, but the system right now successfully prevents price wars. And yes, I am happy with that, because it ensures that authors get proper funding instead of having to fight for the scraps. > Last I read, Amazon mainly fights for cheaper kindle prices, because it's considerably cheaper to sell a 12 meg file than a 200 page physical book The printing and distribution costs of a book are not that high, once you have a significant enough mass of books. What Amazon wants to do here is squeeze the authors off their profit, and this must be prevented. Books are culture, and culture must not be bowing to the demands of predatory capitalism or else we'll sooner or later live in a Idiocracy world with a movie called "*ss" the sole Oscar winner... (okay, that was an exaggeration, but still, it's a danger to culture!)
  - Kocrachon 9y ago
    While it seems ideal, I don't like the idea of consumer goods being regulated outside of groceries and other necessities. My Raptor romance novel should not be 'regulated'.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      I suspect the author of a successful novel hopes for some form of regulation to help guarantee revenue from the effort.
      - Kocrachon 9y ago
        Can't that be said for every goods manufacturer? That would be like saying their needs to be regulation on the price of DVDs. Should we eliminate the 1 dollar DVD bin at WalMart now?
  - taeric 9y ago
    I'm highly skeptical of the claim that printing and distribution costs are not that high. I get that they are not a high part of most publishers margins, but isn't that mainly because they have already invested in the infrastructure necessary to do these things. I would guess at a long timeline for deprecation write offs. This does not make them cheap, by any measure. (Indeed, just try printing a few thousand copies of a book personally, and see how small of a part of your margins this would be.) Same is similarly true for ebook distribution. It isn't like the infrastructure to do that at scale is free, either. Both in technical of copying the bits around, and in the physical of authors/editors/etc. However, I fail to see any way in which the advantages do not weigh in on the ebook side heavily.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Copyright is the much larger "danger to culture". We invented it to try to keep artistic recompense safe, but like most idealistic propositions, the sharks have moved in and gamed it and now we are all worse off. Allowing anyone to make any type of contribution without fear of a crackdown from Big Legal leads to a much more prosperous culture. This is already becoming reality as the internet has made traditional copyright completely unenforceable on the general population. For example, Adobe no longer sells Photoshop as a standalone unit, but as an ongoing subscription, which gives the impression that the vendor is an active participant in usage.
randcraw 9y ago
I've long wondered, with the rise of the internet, is prosecution really necessary to address unsavory business practices like these? Why not force the company into the light, posting this information in a useful form that informs the public and shames the malefactor? I'm a strong proponent of open <EVERYTHING>. If shady behavior arises in business, government, public services, and even public discourse, I'd love to see a moderated form of public disclosure become the standard way to reveal and address such 'discrepancies'. Now that the 'net is ubiquitous, I don't see why age-old small town arbitration principles can't be applied to redress virtually all forms of grievance, as long as the public exchange is conducted decorously, as a judge or strict moderator rules could ensure. IMO, the state of AI is getting pretty close to enabling this sort of moderator service, making it impossible for 'conduct unbecoming' to persist out of the public eye. What cellphone videos are doing to police/perp misbehavior ought to be possible for general business practices too.
- johncolanduoni 9y ago
  Because ultimately most people won't care enough to stop going with the cheaper option, especially when all you can point to is negative effects for vendors. It's not like Amazon is going around creating spurious libel lawsuits against people for publishing criticism of their business practices, or paying for people to muddy the waters with counter-articles. It's just that the information largely fall on deaf ears. I'm not sure what a judge or moderator would do when there's no real back and forth. A lot of conduct unbecoming like this becomes public (Intel is a good example). How many people stopped buying their products even with literal judges finding them guilty of some particularly nasty anti-competitive practices?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > Because ultimately most people won't care enough to stop going with the cheaper option, especially when all you can point to is negative effects for vendors. Indeed. If people could get cheaper clothing if slavery was made legal again, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Witness to a lesser extent the general sentiment on HN that Uber is "helping drivers", when they're indentured servants. I wouldn't call it consumer excess when you're exploiting someone with limited options.