Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Lots of companies provide no useful services to me. Take every luxury car maker. Or hog producers. If you don't find their product to be a good value for money, or just don't want it, of course you won't buy it. But this kind of comment seems to imply that not only you don't need to buy their kind of product, you don't want them to provide it to others. Or am I missing something?
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I didn't say 'to me'.
If the publishers can be easily disintermediated it means that all the services they provide can be easily provided by someone else.
If Amazon can do the same tasks just as well, but more efficiently, that is good for authors and readers.
When Shatzkin says that publishers can be easily disintermediated without protection from the government, he is saying that they aren't really needed. If they provided a vital service, that another element of the chain could not provide, they
couldn't be disintermediated.