Quote:
Originally Posted by Logseman
Is it just me who notices certain parallels between the two cost-spiraling industries? Doctors/Teachers do not get to choose what meds/books are to be purchased by patients/students but it is a central body above them, so the middlemen go directly to lobby the central body in order to get their texts selected, and since the hospitals/universities are isolated from the effects of the choices, there is no cost-saving incentive but obscure settlements between big pharma/big publishers and the central bodies.
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Both medicine and education are heavily regulated industries and both are considered as necessitities in modern society. Whether the spiraling costs are due to the regulation (e.g. the lack of choice in providing services) or blind demand (i.e. people will pay almost any cost for the services) is an open question. It is also quite possible that medicine is heavily influenced by one while education is heavily influenced by the other.
Quite frankly though, I doubt that there is collusion between pharma/publishers and those central bodies. That's particularly true for education. Simply put, publishers benefit from the education system but the education system does not benefit from publishers (indeed, publishers are more of a burden).