While we're talking about money... I said Apple's downloadable movie price is too high, especially the fifteen bucks for new movies.
Why does Apple so far only have Disney? ... it turns out the movie industry thinks fifteen bucks is too cheap! Amazon Unbox downloadable movies are mostly twenty dollars each!
What the frig is wrong with these people? Have they not been to business school? Don't they know that there is a relation between price and sales? And if price too high your profit drops just like it does if you price too low?
Why does everybody want 99% profits on downloadable products when they accept 3% profit on physical items? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
scripture says that money is the root of ALL EVIL. greed is common like the weeds that survive year round.
ReplyDeleteNope, fella. If you're going to base your life on the bible, you really ought to read it first hand. It is the *love* of money...
ReplyDeleteTimothy 6:10. 'For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.'
Yep. Money is, at worse, a necessary evil. We needed a symbolic tool for simpler bartering. Suppress money, and you'll see the love of power take other equally nasty forms instantly. Like the legalized slavery of feudalism, for instance, when PEOPLE belonged to the local lords.
ReplyDeleteAbout stupid greed... "Legal" videogames here in Lebanon are usually priced double what they cost abroad.
Most of them can also be found on the piracy market, in abundance. $10 for an X-Box game, $4 for a PS2 DVD or a DVD movie. Considering the very low local purchasing power, who would buy an official game for the price of 15 perfectly working ones? And only to fill the pockets of insanely avid importers?
Now, it's public knowledge (for those who bother to get informed) that copied games -and movies, too- profit to the mafias, if not worse. Like all international counterfeiting. All DVD activity in Lebanon is believed to go directly into the pockets of the Assad family.
Now, I wonder : instead of whining about a totally imaginary "profit loss" (since almost nobody can afford to buy the originals), what if a company like Sony should market a special local edition of their games, let's say even 50% more expensive than the illegal, that also wouldn't have a nice bok or user's manual, but would satisfy the buyer's coscience? Wouldn't it work? Yes, probably. They could have them produced locally, dirt-cheap (many retailers are copying their copies and making a living out of it). And then, the legitimate, hard-working companies would pocket all the nice, well-deserved benefits that others are currently getting instead.
The quantity would certainly compensate the small margins, considering organized crime is bothering to do the business. But, it would take some courageous reconsideration of the companies' policies. Are they ready to question their habits in order to take back the quite vast market of poor countries?
And if this change in attitude affected their prices policies in the West, they would likely benefit from it in the end. When I was living in France, I used to buy all the good videogames I could afford on my small budget... and I had a long "wanted" list. If they had been, say, twice cheaper, it's very simple : I would've immediately bought twice as many!
I'm sure there are many other market examples. But the downloadable stuff business is hugely representative : once you have the adequate server, you sell only data, which costs practically nothing to duplicate and send. So, basically, you're only billing your benefits.
Which explaind why Domai.com offers so many interesting download deals : the boss just bothered to think! It would be totally stupid to try and make a pirate site offering the same, stolen material, considering the extra cost that being outside the law always implies. It just wouldn't be profitable.
The policies of today's deciders are harming the capitalistic profit, and not only the desires of the customers. Capitalists themselves are sabotaging the advantages of capitalism. It's like they're lazy : they prefer to make the biggest possible cut on little production, than produce more, sell cheaper, and make more overall benefits!
P.S.: I'm not getting anybody in trouble by talking about this country's state of things. The authorities ARE making serious attempts at cracking down multimedia piracy, following international agreements. But still, official shops are all closing, or sitting on their unsold stocks. The facts are proving me right...
On another register:
ReplyDelete"Greed is common like the weeds that survive year round."
I don't agree there. See the "Ephebophilia" article and thread. DESIRE is near-universal. Greed is perverted desire, that doesn't know when to stop contented and how to have enough.
"Be contented when you have got all you want." Perhaos this is what Holbrook Jackson meant to say. The greedy doesn't just WANT money, he wants always more, MORE, MORE!!! Bwahahahahahaaaah!
And then, he'll fear death, because he can't take it all with him. Me, when I travel to another country, I only take a small amount of lebanese currency, for the arrival expenses the day I return. Taking more would just be a foolish burden.
Samely, the pedophile won't be contented before he has sexually "possessed" a minor (I find the word very relevant). And even then, he sometimes won't stop there, and he'll kill. Sometimes to suppress witnesses. Sometimes, simply because killing and/or destroying is the ultimate form of greed : nobody else can ever have later what YOU have had. Ultimate, thoughtless, monstruous selfishness.
I don't know where you got the 3% figure from - I don't have the proper numbers right here but seem to remember that the industry's overall margins are much higher than that.
ReplyDeleteOf course for downloadable products they can be extended much further but the fact that these guys had a licence to print money before, and feel entitled to one, doesn't help.
As for money being good or bad, I think inherently it's neither, but it is a dangerous thing to handle. And I seem to remember that the bible (as well as the Koran) is quite clear in its damnation of interest, which I also believe to be the root of most, if not all, our current economic problems.
After all, money is about the only bartering medium which doesn't rot or otherwise physically lose value, so that alone gives it an advantage over other goods - adding interest on top of that seems like double-dipping (if you do some research you'll find that there were currencies in the past with money that was intentionally made to deteriorate, and that similar experiments in modern times were regularly quickly squashed by the authorities who have no interest in such a thing succeeding).
I know what you mean. Cash always seems to melt through my fingers. ;-)
ReplyDeleteSee! You're doing the right thing!
ReplyDelete:-P