4 ms·

On producing specific books. Nothing to stop me writing a novel with the same themes as yours has.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
If one company has a monopoly on faucets, another has one on pipes, another has one on valves, you're trying to argue that there is plenty of competition for "plumbing supplies" but that doesn't help you if you need a faucet and there's only one supplier. Notice how your argument, if true, would defeat the point of the monopoly. If there were ten books that were all fungible with one another then each of the suppliers would want to lower prices to increase sales and you'd end up at the marginal cost, which for digital products is zero. And sometimes this even happens -- there is a lot of free-as-in-beer software, free-with-ads news websites etc. But the context of lending libraries is for when that isn't the case. You don't need to get a copy of nginx from the local library because you can get it for free from the authors.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- c0pium 3y ago
  That’s not how this marketplace works at all. A better analogy is to say that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs, yet they are still forced to compete with Porsche, who has their own monopoly on creating Porsches. There’s a two-sided marketplace for creative works, where publishers need to get works from creators and license them to customers. They want to maximize their own profits, but they also need to make a certain amount revenue as all methods of distribution have fixed costs.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > A better analogy is to say that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs BMW is a trademark. You can't take a Kia and put a BMW badge on it. You can, in principle, make an exact replica of a particular BMW model and put your own badge on it, and in that sense BMW doesn't have a monopoly on "BMWs" except insofar as some of the parts may be patented or (for the software) copyrighted. But that isn't an analogy, it's the original thing. Notice what happens when you take the original thing (intellectual property) out of the equation, your statement becomes "Bayer has a monopoly on aspirin", which they don't, because the Aspirin trademark became generic and it's not under patent.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      First, BMW has thousands of patents. They also have trademarks, copyrights, and trade secret manufacturing processes. Second, if you make a non-BMW you can’t legally sell it as a BMW or you’re committing fraud. Third, most of the reason that people buy luxury brands like BMW is actually because of the cachet that the name has, so even if you could make an identical one in Prussia and call it a PMW, it would be a different and less valuable thing. All of which is a long winded way of saying, BMW are the only ones who can make BMWs. Thus they have a monopoly on making BMWs. Taking intellectual property out of a conversation about intellectual property has predictably strange and totally irrelevant results. Why is that surprising?
  - llm_trw 3y ago
    Given that book prices are rising faster than _anything else in the economy_ the market place isn't working at all. Let them eat competition.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      Huh? In the United States books have inflated by -0.1% per year since 1997, compared with the overall economy which inflated at 2.46% per year on average during the same period. Because of the stiff competition. Unless you mean specifically textbooks, which are inflating because piracy has destroyed the demand (the annual revenue of the textbook market is down ~33% since 2014, despite increases in both prices and enrollment in colleges). You can see the causal link here as increases in pricing are lagging decreasing sales. If the prices were driving the decreasing sales you would expect the opposite behavior.
      - llm_trw 3y ago
        Why start at 2014? https://archive.attn.com/stories/1164/heres-exactly-why-college-textbooks-are-so-expensive https://archive.attn.com/stories/1164/heres-exactly-why-coll... Between 1975 and 2014 college books outpaced inflation over three times.
        c0pium 3y ago
        You should look at that chart a bit more carefully.
- harvey9 3y ago
  No. I have a monopoly on faucets made to my design, not on faucets generally. Bloomsbury have a monopoly on Harry Potter books, Penguin can still publish Percy Jackson.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > No. I have a monopoly on faucets made to my design, not on faucets generally. You can try to subdivide any particular market but you still can't get yourself out of the second half of the post: If the products were actually substitutes then the prices would approach the marginal cost. If they're not, they're not. College textbooks are an obvious example of this. Anybody can make "math textbook" but only one of them will have the homework problems your professor will assign in them, so you need that one and the publisher has a monopoly.
  - xhkkffbf 3y ago
    Exactly. This is the same as saying a carpenter has a monopoly on their work. They can sell it to an employer up front by the hour or afterwards as a good. But no one else can come along and take it without paying.

If one company has a monopoly on faucets, another has one on pipes, another has one on valves, you're trying to argue that there is plenty of competition for "plumbing supplies" but that doesn't help you if you need a faucet and there's only one supplier. Notice how your argument, if true, would defeat the point of the monopoly. If there were ten books that were all fungible with one another then each of the suppliers would want to lower prices to increase sales and you'd end up at the marginal cost, which for digital products is zero. And sometimes this even happens -- there is a lot of free-as-in-beer software, free-with-ads news websites etc. But the context of lending libraries is for when that isn't the case. You don't need to get a copy of nginx from the local library because you can get it for free from the authors.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
c0pium 3y ago
That’s not how this marketplace works at all. A better analogy is to say that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs, yet they are still forced to compete with Porsche, who has their own monopoly on creating Porsches. There’s a two-sided marketplace for creative works, where publishers need to get works from creators and license them to customers. They want to maximize their own profits, but they also need to make a certain amount revenue as all methods of distribution have fixed costs.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > A better analogy is to say that BMW has a monopoly on making BMWs BMW is a trademark. You can't take a Kia and put a BMW badge on it. You can, in principle, make an exact replica of a particular BMW model and put your own badge on it, and in that sense BMW doesn't have a monopoly on "BMWs" except insofar as some of the parts may be patented or (for the software) copyrighted. But that isn't an analogy, it's the original thing. Notice what happens when you take the original thing (intellectual property) out of the equation, your statement becomes "Bayer has a monopoly on aspirin", which they don't, because the Aspirin trademark became generic and it's not under patent.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    First, BMW has thousands of patents. They also have trademarks, copyrights, and trade secret manufacturing processes. Second, if you make a non-BMW you can’t legally sell it as a BMW or you’re committing fraud. Third, most of the reason that people buy luxury brands like BMW is actually because of the cachet that the name has, so even if you could make an identical one in Prussia and call it a PMW, it would be a different and less valuable thing. All of which is a long winded way of saying, BMW are the only ones who can make BMWs. Thus they have a monopoly on making BMWs. Taking intellectual property out of a conversation about intellectual property has predictably strange and totally irrelevant results. Why is that surprising?
- llm_trw 3y ago
  Given that book prices are rising faster than _anything else in the economy_ the market place isn't working at all. Let them eat competition.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    Huh? In the United States books have inflated by -0.1% per year since 1997, compared with the overall economy which inflated at 2.46% per year on average during the same period. Because of the stiff competition. Unless you mean specifically textbooks, which are inflating because piracy has destroyed the demand (the annual revenue of the textbook market is down ~33% since 2014, despite increases in both prices and enrollment in colleges). You can see the causal link here as increases in pricing are lagging decreasing sales. If the prices were driving the decreasing sales you would expect the opposite behavior.
    - llm_trw 3y ago
      Why start at 2014? https://archive.attn.com/stories/1164/heres-exactly-why-college-textbooks-are-so-expensive https://archive.attn.com/stories/1164/heres-exactly-why-coll... Between 1975 and 2014 college books outpaced inflation over three times.
      - c0pium 3y ago
        You should look at that chart a bit more carefully.
harvey9 3y ago
No. I have a monopoly on faucets made to my design, not on faucets generally. Bloomsbury have a monopoly on Harry Potter books, Penguin can still publish Percy Jackson.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > No. I have a monopoly on faucets made to my design, not on faucets generally. You can try to subdivide any particular market but you still can't get yourself out of the second half of the post: If the products were actually substitutes then the prices would approach the marginal cost. If they're not, they're not. College textbooks are an obvious example of this. Anybody can make "math textbook" but only one of them will have the homework problems your professor will assign in them, so you need that one and the publisher has a monopoly.
- xhkkffbf 3y ago
  Exactly. This is the same as saying a carpenter has a monopoly on their work. They can sell it to an employer up front by the hour or afterwards as a good. But no one else can come along and take it without paying.