On 06/01/2014 01:54, Chris Angelico wrote:
On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote:
(However, to the extent that Amazon has gained monopoly power over the book
market, that reasoning may not apply. Amazon is not *technically* a
monopoly, but they are clearly well on the way to becoming one, at which
point the customer has no effective choice and the market is no longer
free.)
They don't need a monopoly on the whole book market, just on specific
books - which they did have, in the cited case. I actually asked the
author (translator, really - it's a translation of "Alice in
Wonderland") how he would prefer me to buy, as there are some who sell
on Amazon and somewhere else. There was no alternative to Amazon, ergo
no choice and the market was not free. Like so many things, one choice
("I want to buy Ailice's Anters in Ferlielann") mandates another
("Must buy through Amazon").
I don't know what it cost Amazon to ship me two copies of a book, but
still probably less than they got out of me, so they're still ahead.
Even if they lost money on this particular deal, they're still way
ahead because of all the people who decide it's not worth their time
to spend an hour or so trying to get a replacement. So yep, this
policy is serving Amazon fairly well.
ChrisA
So much for my "You never know, we might even end up with a thread
whereby the discussion is Python, the whole Python and nothing but the
Python." :)
--
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.
Mark Lawrence
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https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
