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Amazon and Apple did not decide such a thing. Apple and the publishers had worked out an agreement to raise the price of ebooks to be closer to that of new rele

Amazon and Apple did not decide such a thing. Apple and the publishers had worked out an agreement to raise the price of ebooks to be closer to that of new releases to counter the monopolistic cheap-to-the-point-of-failing-authors approach from Amazon. The US Government got involved in that agreement and declared it illegal because it hurt Amazon's bottom line…and the publishing industry is in a much worse situation with Amazon controlling even more of the income than ever, while now diverting revenue to shitty LLM-publishers and away from humans who try to write things that people want to read. Basically, that decision by the government was wrong, and we’re all suffering for it. Upcoming decisions and the DMA are different, but they are making many of the same mistakes as the US Government did with the publishing agreement, in that these intervention will: - reduce overall security on devices that must be more secure than personal computers because they often act as payment devices, personal IDs, and other matters (this is not guaranteed, but many of the moves being advocated are going to lead to bad actors getting to pretend that they are equivalent to the operating system, or provide access to Secure Enclave data in ways that encourage large criminal and nation state attacks on the ecosystem) - reduce overall payment security and convenience for real people (you think that cancelling a NYT subscription is hard, let Tim Sweeney design a payment flow and it will take a personal visit to Epic to cancel a subscription, and even then it will take more time than it should) Everyone focuses on the 30%. It should be lower; there should be wider access and less gatekeeping‡. But if you want it to be zero, start taking on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch monopolies, too as they charge as much and sometimes more. ‡ I think that Apple (and probably Google) need to get over their American prudishness. This would require having better categorization and parental controls that could be enabled by device owners and even providing applications ways of applying parental controls (let Tumblr bring its adult-oriented content back, but enable the Tumblr app to apply parental controls via an API). There are other changes that I would like to see, but absolutely none of them involve letting Tim Sweeney / Epic get involved in taking payment details, because I trust him far less than I trust Tim Cook / Apple (or even Google).

stale2002 2y ago
> Apple and the publishers had worked out an agreement to raise the price of ebooks to be closer to that of new releases to counter the monopolistic cheap-to-the-point-of-failing-authors approach from Amazon. Thats called anti-competive behavior to raise prices. Price dumping isn't a thing. Its basically not illegal, and is instead something that the US government, and its population, want to encourage. I am sure that there are some outdated economics textbooks that put out this hypothetical of the extremely rare "bad kind" of price dumping, and one or 2 long irrelevant court cases. But these days, its basically not a bad thing. Complaints about price dumping are almost never done in good faith. Instead, they are done by monopolistic entities that want to screw over customers by illegally coordinating price increases. > Basically, that decision by the government was wrong, and we’re all suffering for it. I am going to say that the monopolistic group of sellers who were trying to raise prices was wrong. And the law supports me. > But if you want it to be zero, start taking on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch monopolies, too as they charge as much and sometimes more. Or, instead of that, we can use the government to force it to be zero in whatever ways that we can, even if we don't effect other markets. Those other markets, while maybe deserving of some scrutiny, are smaller than the smartphone market. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to care about the much larger and more important market, and to make those fees 0. > letting Tim Sweeney / Epic get involved in taking payment details, because I trust him far less than I trust Tim Cook / Apple Then use your consumer rights to not install the epic app store. And leave other people's phone's alone.

stale2002 2y ago

> Apple and the publishers had worked out an agreement to raise the price of ebooks to be closer to that of new releases to counter the monopolistic cheap-to-the-point-of-failing-authors approach from Amazon. Thats called anti-competive behavior to raise prices. Price dumping isn't a thing. Its basically not illegal, and is instead something that the US government, and its population, want to encourage. I am sure that there are some outdated economics textbooks that put out this hypothetical of the extremely rare "bad kind" of price dumping, and one or 2 long irrelevant court cases. But these days, its basically not a bad thing. Complaints about price dumping are almost never done in good faith. Instead, they are done by monopolistic entities that want to screw over customers by illegally coordinating price increases. > Basically, that decision by the government was wrong, and we’re all suffering for it. I am going to say that the monopolistic group of sellers who were trying to raise prices was wrong. And the law supports me. > But if you want it to be zero, start taking on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch monopolies, too as they charge as much and sometimes more. Or, instead of that, we can use the government to force it to be zero in whatever ways that we can, even if we don't effect other markets. Those other markets, while maybe deserving of some scrutiny, are smaller than the smartphone market. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to care about the much larger and more important market, and to make those fees 0. > letting Tim Sweeney / Epic get involved in taking payment details, because I trust him far less than I trust Tim Cook / Apple Then use your consumer rights to not install the epic app store. And leave other people's phone's alone.