4 ms·

The Economist's global rip off

55 points by austinallegro 1y ago

tracerbulletx 1y ago
Companies have different pricing in different markets... based on the differing consumer behaviors and maximizing volume/price dynamics. This is business 101
- bdangubic 1y ago
  since you seemed to be business 101 guru make some sense out of this for us (if you read it…)
  - odo1242 1y ago
    The game developer Pirate Software had a video on this. He mentioned that the demo for his game, Heartbound, was really popular in Brazil, but due to Brazilians not having high purchasing power, the final version was too expensive for Brazilians to buy. So he lowered the price of the game in Brazil and added Portuguese translations to the game, and the game now makes 25% of revenue from Brazilian players (also it increased the total amount of revenue and reduced piracy, I think) The general idea is based on charging people based on how much they can pay. There are reasonable ways to execute this (I’d argue localized pricing is among them, along with things like open source software and donations, and financial aid at colleges) and unreasonable ways (like Kroger’s bid to use facial recognition to do it in their stores)
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    Price discrimination is a subject covered in introductory level microeconomics courses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination Bottom line is collect more money from those able and willing to pay you more, and collect less from those less able and willing to pay you, as long as it is above the cost of goods sold. At some national parks or attractions in poorer countries, they will ask to see your passport and collect more money if you are from a richer country.
- godelski 1y ago
  [dead]
- xk_id 1y ago
  So? If this information is so obvious, why did you feel the urge to state it?
slyall 1y ago
Many years ago the Economist charged just $50/year everywhere for the Digital edition. They gradually increased it though. Then at one point changed it to a reflect the local price of the print edition in your country. I live in NZ so price was relatively high. To reduce my costs I changed my address to the US (my employer at the time). Here is a post I did 10 years ago on their pricing: https://blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2015/03/parallel-importing-vs-the-economist/ https://blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2015/03/parallel-importing-vs-t...
jonahhorowitz 1y ago
This post in current affairs[0] remains the best piece of writing about the Economist that I've ever read. [0] - https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/05/how-the-economis...
- thegrim33 1y ago
  The best piece of writing about the Economist you've ever read is a piece by an author who admits that "until last week, I had not read The Economist since high school"? This is the author whose opinion on the Economist you trust?
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    I haven’t read the piece, but if someone makes a well-reasoned argument, it doesn’t matter who they are or what credentials they hold. It’s equally as meek a counter-argument as, “trust me because I hold degrees in this topic.” Good. Then it should be easy for you to make a well-reasoned argument.
    - sien 1y ago
      The author has discovered that The Economist is pro-market. As someone who is a Yale educated leftist and believes that markets do not work Robinson is upset. Meanwhile, when employers of his own magazine wanted it to become a worker owned socialist cooperative he got them to resign. Socialism for thee, not for me.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - margalabargala 1y ago
      I see your point but the author is freely admitting their ignorance about the whole thing. Imagine if someone says "I spent the last week reading about the history of the Levant and I know how to implement peace in that region".
comrade1234 1y ago
India and Pakistan are overall poor but there’s also a vast upper and middle class with wealth and those are the people buying subscriptions to the economist. They have equivalent wealth to, for example, Bay Area tech industry managers but have much better lives than in the USA with private drivers, live-in chefs, live-in child care… these are my friends and I know that they can pay more than me for a subscription to the economist.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  > India and Pakistan are overall poor but there’s also a vast upper and middle class with wealth I mean... kinda? Switzerland has 9 million total people, and more millionaires than India and Pakistan combined. But anyway this post is saying that Indians have the cheapest subscriptions, not taking purchasing power into account.
  - sieve 1y ago
    > Switzerland has 9 million total people, and more millionaires than India and Pakistan combined. Well, based on official figures, perhaps. I am pretty sure, however, that India alone has more than 20 million dollar millionaires. A large part of the Indian economy operates outside the tax net. Some of it is deliberate (income from farming is not taxed, even if you earn tens of millions of rupees from your acreage), the rest is due to garden variety tax fraud. Basic apartments in the top 10 cities start at $200,000 (could be something like $500,000 in places like Mumbai). And plenty of people own 2-3-4 of these. You have to move to distant suburbs if you want cheaper housing. Millions of Indian households hold large quantities of gold. Millions invest in the stock market. An upper-middle-class life for a family of three in one of the major cities requires around $30,000 easy (double that if you are the splurging kind) which can buy you a LOT more than what the same sum can get you in LA/NY/London. Once you add these up, my figure is completely within the realm of possibility.
    - fakedang 1y ago
      20 million dollar millionaires means that more than 1% of Indians have 1m USD, which is certainly not the case - the number of Indians actually paying income tax alone is just around that number. India actually has about 320k USD millionaires, Pakistan 20k and Switzerland 370k, from a cursory Google search. You forget the fact that most Indians don't live in the city in 1-2 Cr (roughly $120-250k) homes, and their gold jewelry usually amounts to $50k tops.
suraci 1y ago
I like The Economist; The Economist is more honest than other media
- jfengel 1y ago
  "Honest" is a good way of putting it. They have a bias -- that is, a set of values through which they interpret the facts. But they don't ignore facts, or just make them up, in order to justify their bias. They understand that the world is complicated, and that multiple world-views have to coexist despite disagreements on what facts mean. They make arguments based on their own world-view, but they'll be sound arguments on that basis. They reject bad arguments, even those whose conclusions nominally agree with them.
rqtqtqtt 1y ago
[dead]
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Another dimension affecting pricing: enterprise and institutional journal price inflation out-competes the price point ordinary citizens are able to afford, leading to a profit-price spiral within the category and it leads to fewer features and less access to mere mortals.
elcritch 1y ago
I got an Economist subscription one year. It was nice getting quality content and supportinf journalism. However, it irritated me to no end that despite paying a couple of hundred bucks that the website still showed excessive cheap web advertising. I canceled after that year because of that.
metalman 1y ago
the pricing for lower income countrys is proof of a kind of desperation in there atempts to retain relevancy, the ultra high pricing in saudi/swiss is further proof, as it ensures that the wealthy will never hear the help discussing the same storys, the last proof is the missing countrys from the list, kind of like the mean spirited weather reporting in England, that greys out Ireland proper. Ho hum, the mechanics of money and class ,ridiculously simple, but robust and proof(ha) against change

55 points by austinallegro 1y ago

Companies have different pricing in different markets... based on the differing consumer behaviors and maximizing volume/price dynamics. This is business 101

bdangubic 1y ago
since you seemed to be business 101 guru make some sense out of this for us (if you read it…)
- odo1242 1y ago
  The game developer Pirate Software had a video on this. He mentioned that the demo for his game, Heartbound, was really popular in Brazil, but due to Brazilians not having high purchasing power, the final version was too expensive for Brazilians to buy. So he lowered the price of the game in Brazil and added Portuguese translations to the game, and the game now makes 25% of revenue from Brazilian players (also it increased the total amount of revenue and reduced piracy, I think) The general idea is based on charging people based on how much they can pay. There are reasonable ways to execute this (I’d argue localized pricing is among them, along with things like open source software and donations, and financial aid at colleges) and unreasonable ways (like Kroger’s bid to use facial recognition to do it in their stores)
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Price discrimination is a subject covered in introductory level microeconomics courses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination Bottom line is collect more money from those able and willing to pay you more, and collect less from those less able and willing to pay you, as long as it is above the cost of goods sold. At some national parks or attractions in poorer countries, they will ask to see your passport and collect more money if you are from a richer country.
godelski 1y ago
[dead]
xk_id 1y ago
So? If this information is so obvious, why did you feel the urge to state it?

slyall 1y ago

Many years ago the Economist charged just $50/year everywhere for the Digital edition. They gradually increased it though. Then at one point changed it to a reflect the local price of the print edition in your country. I live in NZ so price was relatively high. To reduce my costs I changed my address to the US (my employer at the time). Here is a post I did 10 years ago on their pricing: https://blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2015/03/parallel-importing-vs-the-economist/ https://blog.darkmere.gen.nz/2015/03/parallel-importing-vs-t...

jonahhorowitz 1y ago

This post in current affairs[0] remains the best piece of writing about the Economist that I've ever read. [0] - https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2017/05/how-the-economis...

thegrim33 1y ago
The best piece of writing about the Economist you've ever read is a piece by an author who admits that "until last week, I had not read The Economist since high school"? This is the author whose opinion on the Economist you trust?
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  I haven’t read the piece, but if someone makes a well-reasoned argument, it doesn’t matter who they are or what credentials they hold. It’s equally as meek a counter-argument as, “trust me because I hold degrees in this topic.” Good. Then it should be easy for you to make a well-reasoned argument.
  - sien 1y ago
    The author has discovered that The Economist is pro-market. As someone who is a Yale educated leftist and believes that markets do not work Robinson is upset. Meanwhile, when employers of his own magazine wanted it to become a worker owned socialist cooperative he got them to resign. Socialism for thee, not for me.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    I see your point but the author is freely admitting their ignorance about the whole thing. Imagine if someone says "I spent the last week reading about the history of the Levant and I know how to implement peace in that region".

comrade1234 1y ago

India and Pakistan are overall poor but there’s also a vast upper and middle class with wealth and those are the people buying subscriptions to the economist. They have equivalent wealth to, for example, Bay Area tech industry managers but have much better lives than in the USA with private drivers, live-in chefs, live-in child care… these are my friends and I know that they can pay more than me for a subscription to the economist.

Marsymars 1y ago
> India and Pakistan are overall poor but there’s also a vast upper and middle class with wealth I mean... kinda? Switzerland has 9 million total people, and more millionaires than India and Pakistan combined. But anyway this post is saying that Indians have the cheapest subscriptions, not taking purchasing power into account.
- sieve 1y ago
  > Switzerland has 9 million total people, and more millionaires than India and Pakistan combined. Well, based on official figures, perhaps. I am pretty sure, however, that India alone has more than 20 million dollar millionaires. A large part of the Indian economy operates outside the tax net. Some of it is deliberate (income from farming is not taxed, even if you earn tens of millions of rupees from your acreage), the rest is due to garden variety tax fraud. Basic apartments in the top 10 cities start at $200,000 (could be something like $500,000 in places like Mumbai). And plenty of people own 2-3-4 of these. You have to move to distant suburbs if you want cheaper housing. Millions of Indian households hold large quantities of gold. Millions invest in the stock market. An upper-middle-class life for a family of three in one of the major cities requires around $30,000 easy (double that if you are the splurging kind) which can buy you a LOT more than what the same sum can get you in LA/NY/London. Once you add these up, my figure is completely within the realm of possibility.
  - fakedang 1y ago
    20 million dollar millionaires means that more than 1% of Indians have 1m USD, which is certainly not the case - the number of Indians actually paying income tax alone is just around that number. India actually has about 320k USD millionaires, Pakistan 20k and Switzerland 370k, from a cursory Google search. You forget the fact that most Indians don't live in the city in 1-2 Cr (roughly $120-250k) homes, and their gold jewelry usually amounts to $50k tops.

suraci 1y ago

I like The Economist; The Economist is more honest than other media

jfengel 1y ago
"Honest" is a good way of putting it. They have a bias -- that is, a set of values through which they interpret the facts. But they don't ignore facts, or just make them up, in order to justify their bias. They understand that the world is complicated, and that multiple world-views have to coexist despite disagreements on what facts mean. They make arguments based on their own world-view, but they'll be sound arguments on that basis. They reject bad arguments, even those whose conclusions nominally agree with them.

rqtqtqtt 1y ago

[dead]

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Another dimension affecting pricing: enterprise and institutional journal price inflation out-competes the price point ordinary citizens are able to afford, leading to a profit-price spiral within the category and it leads to fewer features and less access to mere mortals.

elcritch 1y ago

I got an Economist subscription one year. It was nice getting quality content and supportinf journalism. However, it irritated me to no end that despite paying a couple of hundred bucks that the website still showed excessive cheap web advertising. I canceled after that year because of that.

metalman 1y ago

the pricing for lower income countrys is proof of a kind of desperation in there atempts to retain relevancy, the ultra high pricing in saudi/swiss is further proof, as it ensures that the wealthy will never hear the help discussing the same storys, the last proof is the missing countrys from the list, kind of like the mean spirited weather reporting in England, that greys out Ireland proper. Ho hum, the mechanics of money and class ,ridiculously simple, but robust and proof(ha) against change