I appreciate the dance, but could you answer the question please?
I started reading these forums after Ron Paul suggested mises.org in one of his books(that was a little over a year ago). This website played a large part in my transition from a minarchist to an an-cap. So while I can’t say for sure how many of the 40,000 visitors are a part of the “choir”, I’d guess that there’s a good number of people like me reading these forums on a frequent basis.
Yes I will answer your question. My answer is no.
Has anyone been able to find the actual court documents?
No, I didn’t. I just wanted to make an Econ 101 welfare analysis dead weight loss joke.
Also, I am baffled how one can take a look at the progression of events and sue these companies:
At first, there were only physical books. Some cost a moderate amount, some much more, due to all the processing needed to make them.
Then came eBooks, which are quite a bit cheaper.
But suddenly, let’s sue the companies with the cheaper books because they’re not cheap enough!
What it does show you is that for once the government’s glorious quest for just pricing isn’t motivated by the victim-company’s competitors - if that were the case, they’d be saying the ebooks are too cheap!
…So basically what you’re saying is everything that falls into an “IP” category is “overpriced”, and you know this because you assume the price of every single item in that category would be different than what it currently is?
Would the price of any given ebook be higher or lower if there were no IP? Clearly it would be lower, and since the free market-price is the correct price, one can say that ebooks are overpriced.
Do you favor IP? Is that your point?
Same here, but it was listening to the Lew Rockwell podcasts that introduced me to Mises and the community last year. It just doesn’t make sense to me that the state has any validity to intervene on the price of eBooks, but I would imagine that if the prices were too high, their sales would suffer and profits would fall, so they probably know how to read the market better than the Department of (in)Justice, adjusting prices accordingly. I still mostly read the forums, only recently starting to get involved in the conversation. I look forward to having those with more insight and experience correct me so I don’t get too lost in the information. Look at the Mises Academy as well for lots of good resources.
Shameless plug:
So can you please explain how what I said isn’t the case? I don’t quite see the difference between what I said and what you said.
Clearly?
Clearly?
Yes, clearly. If Company X holds the exclusive right to publish ABC book, the price of ABC book will tend to be higher than if there were free competition in the production of ABC book. Would you be any less skeptical if I said “the price of a widget given a monopoly widget-producer will tend to be higher than if there were free competition in the production of widgets.” Economics 101 John James, you know this, so what is your objection? I take it you’re trying to make some point about IP in particular? Well, make it.
“tend to be”…meaning it might not be?
Reminds of the current lefty meme about speculators causing the price of a barrel of oil to me $X higher than it otherwise would be.
I want to see the mathematical proof when I hear people talking such nonsense as a price is too high or some perentage of the price is caused by Y.
Speculators do often increase prices.
That’s like saying “drunk drivers do often wreck cars”. (And to make it even more accurate, it would be like if that fact was used to ban drunk driving…and probably drinking in the first place…and maybe even driving at all. Or at least heavily regulating all of those things.)
That doesn’t explain why all cars break down eventually, nor does it account for all wrecks.
Drunk driving should be banned. AFAIK the goal should be to minimize car crashes, not maximize them.
Sounds like the argument IP advocates make in favor of the monopolies you seem to dislike…“AFAIK the goal should be to maximize profit and innovation…not minimize them.”
“tend to be”…meaning it might not be?
That’s correct. If there were no IP law and every publisher could publish ABC book, the price of the book will tend to be (will likely be) lower than if there is a single monopoly publisher. Is it possible that the price would remain the same even without IP? Sure, it’s possible that the other publishers choose not to take advantage of their ability to publish the book, and it’s possible that they manage to form a voluntary cartel to keep prices up. It’s also possible that price controls won’t cause shortages, or that printing money won’t cause prices to rise, or that a business will choose to go bankrupt rather than pass on rising input costs to consumers, or that a socialist government will happen to guess the correct resource allocation and overcome the calculation problem. Those are all possibilities.
If your point is that there is no absolute certainty in economic predictions of this kind, then bravo, thanks for pointing out the obvious.
I thought you just said “Clearly it would be lower”.
You might also want to explain the existence of ebooks in the Mises Store, sold at a price, where they are simultaneously offered on the exact same website for free download.
I did. And?
You might also want to explain the existence of ebooks in the Mises Store, sold at a price, where they are simultaneously offered on the exact same website for free download.
Why?
“Clearly it would be lower” ⇒⇐ “will tend to be (will likely be)”
Because it’s existence doesn’t seem to jive with your claims (but then again, we see you’ve made contradictory claims already anyway, so I suppose there’s no use).