3 ms·

Defining what business models are legal and illegal, based on profit margins, is not a road we should go down in my opinion. Plus, some game consoles (like the

Defining what business models are legal and illegal, based on profit margins, is not a road we should go down in my opinion. Plus, some game consoles (like the Nintendo Switch) are profitable even if nobody buys a game because Nintendo prioritized that, and other game consoles become profitable in-and-of-themselves later in their lifecycle. This leads to all sorts of perverse incentives. If I'm Nintendo, I could sell my game console for $299 with some profit on Day 1 (like now), but then I would be forced to have an open store. Or, I could sell it for $269, take a initial loss, and have a closed store. It would simply made "game consoles shall be sold at a loss" the law, not opened things up. I think that would be atrocious. So... either game consoles can remain locked, or we simply declare game consoles cannot be sold locked.

pas 4y ago
Cutting up the space of all possible business models is exactly the job of these authorities, to solve these coordination problems that arise from raw market forces, that only wants to optimize for a local maxima. (And the companies that try to take certain externalities into consideration are disadvantaged, so they have a smaller market share than otherwise, which in many markets simply means zero ... see eg EVs, nuclear power plants, and other current big "revelations".)
smoldesu 4y ago
Well, the alternatives are: - let the free market create even more perverse incentives - let regulators use even more restrictive means of limiting innovation As someone who errs moderate on the economy, I'd prefer that we don't lean into either extreme. Neither one seems to work well.
jchw 4y ago
FWIW, I agree. It'd be nice if we gradually walked back the idea of selling computers with these kinds of limitations. Some lock down is going to be desirable in some situations, but it should be the exception rather than the norm.

pas 4y ago

Cutting up the space of all possible business models is exactly the job of these authorities, to solve these coordination problems that arise from raw market forces, that only wants to optimize for a local maxima. (And the companies that try to take certain externalities into consideration are disadvantaged, so they have a smaller market share than otherwise, which in many markets simply means zero ... see eg EVs, nuclear power plants, and other current big "revelations".)

smoldesu 4y ago

Well, the alternatives are: - let the free market create even more perverse incentives - let regulators use even more restrictive means of limiting innovation As someone who errs moderate on the economy, I'd prefer that we don't lean into either extreme. Neither one seems to work well.

jchw 4y ago

FWIW, I agree. It'd be nice if we gradually walked back the idea of selling computers with these kinds of limitations. Some lock down is going to be desirable in some situations, but it should be the exception rather than the norm.