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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Well, unrestrained capitalism allows pricing fixing conspiracies, which has anticompetitive affects that tend to drive up prices. So despite being able to charge whatever price you like in most capitalist markets, there are controls (e.g., laws against price-fixing conspiracies) that try and prevent anticompetitive behaviour. It's not enough to simply not buy a book where there's price fixing rigging the game.
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True, but we aren't discussing conspiracy to fix prices; we are discussing whether the publisher or the retailer should be able to set the price. As even the DOJ conceded, agency pricing is not illegal; what is illegal is entering into a conspiracy.
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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
I think the following quote from the author addresses the argument in your first paragraph:
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The weaker reading of Coll’s statement — there’s always something to read for free, so no whining if you have to wait a year to get hold of Piketty’s “Capital” or Strayed’s “Wild”— is an odd underestimation of the importance of reading from someone who cares about writing. Reading is especially important when a book comes along and synchronizes public conversation; the publishers’ preferred pricing model—wait a year for the cheap copy—means that people who can only afford the paperback can’t be part of that conversation.
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The fallacy here is that it assumes there is an entitlement to have immediate access to all things. Being able to own a car is also important. The fact that I can't afford a Rolls Royce doesn't mean RR needs to lower its price so I can buy one. I need to wait and save my money. Readers aren't entitled to immediate access and if they want immediate access, they spend the money on the book instead of a meal out or some other thing. We all have to make choices in daily purchasing.
As for being part of the conversation, the fallacy with the argument is that it assumes (a) everyone wants to be part of the conversation immediately and (b) that everyone is entitled to be part of the conversation immediately. Neither has never been the true and never will be true. Even the vaunted Athenian democracy only allowed certain citizens to participate. And it was centuries before women were allowed to participate in the conversation and when the suffrage movement was active here in the United States, many more women opposed suffrage than supported it.
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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
The middle paragraphs in your post are more strawman than anything. I don't think anyone is saying that all things should be cheap, and it's certainly not the argument of the article that's the subject of this thread. Complaining that people should let the market just work also seems strange when that would seem to be an argument for Amazon to sell books for whatever price they like and negotiate whatever price they like with their suppliers (i.e., the publishers in the case of books).
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The argument to let the market work for itself cuts both ways, but in the end, in the discussion about whether publishers or retailers should set prices, it is an argument as much in favor of agency pricing as against agency pricing. So I am not certain what your point is.
And I never suggested that the article said that all things should be cheap. I was saying that there is no particular reason to single books out to be cheap but not other more-in-demand commodities. If all books should have a ceiling price, so should every other commodity.
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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
One of the more interesting points of the article was that most people attacking Amazon aren't spending much time defending the big publishers because the big publishers are hard to defend. That certainly seems to be the case for your post.
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I don't think BPHs are hard to defend at all, except here on MR where Amazon is king and BPHs are the villains. And it is hard here on MR because so many commenters are blind to any of the arguments that favor pricing higher than they believe books should cost. Inability to defend BPHs has nothing to do with facts; it has to do with people's mindset and unwillingness to accept that there may be another side to argument.