--- JC Dill <lists05@equinephotoart.com> wrote:
David Barak wrote:
--- Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
Is that still true if the "adequate" service is being provided at a price which is two to three times what it should be costing and the provider
is
enjoying the ability to do this because nobody else is in the market space?
I'm confused. Earlier in this thread you were arguing that the current providers were keeping priced artificially LOW.
They are keeping prices artificially low now, to drive out the competition. They will raise prices once they have no competition, as monopoly companies always have done in the past.
Standard free market behavior is for a large company to cut prices (when they can, when they have income from some other source to afford this tactic) to drive the competition out of business. Then once they have a monopoly to raise prices (and thus profits). Check out the price for Microsoft software over the years. As their products each became a de facto monopoly in their market the prices went WAY up.
Windows 98 price (in 1997) -> $209 Office 97 Standard (in 1997) -> $689 Windows XP price (now) -> $199. Office 2003 (now) -> $399. Want to try that again? The problems most people have with microsoft's monopoly status have nothing whatsoever to do with the price of the software which forms the basis of their monopoly (windows + office), but rather their willingness to use the profits from them to subsidize other losing ventures to drive out other competitors. The argument regarding ILECs is reversed. I appreciate the citation of Standard Oil, but it is a fallacy to think that there is a one-to-one mapping between SO and any/all of the ILECs. Assertions that "monopolies do X and they're bad, and we know that Y will eventually do bad because they're a monopoly" are circular. David Barak Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise: http://www.listentothefranchise.com __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com