Quote:
Originally Posted by b0ned0me
You may have been misled by the complexities of the electronics industry. The cartel was in the supply of panels which are one (key) part of the television assembly. NameBrandTVCorp looking to manufacture a model of TV would go shopping for plugs, cases, circuit boards, power supplies and panels and surprisingly find that they could get price-competitive quotes everywhere apart from on the panels, because those suppliers had decided to get together and stitch up their customers.
By the time you as a consumer got to choose between 50 zillion different models of unique TVs, the damage had been done because every TV was x% more expensive due to the inflated cost of its components upstream.
The book analogy would be if suppliers of ink, paper or glue had made cartels to bump up the price of producing books.
|
The e-book analogy would be if the resellers (Amazon, Apple, Kobo etc..) colluded to collect 30% of every sale rather then competing in a fair market. I'm not claiming that's what happened but the net result is the same. By the time the e-books get to the consumer they're already x% more expensive due to the inflated upstream profit taking and lack of competition.