Ask Slashdot: Should Commercial Software Prices Be Pegged To a Country's GDP? 290
Here's a bright idea from dryriver
Why don't software makers look at the average income level in a given country -- per capita GDP for example -- and adjust their software prices in these countries accordingly? Most software makers in the U.S. and EU currently insist on charging the full U.S. or EU price in much poorer countries. "Rampant piracy" and "low sales" is often the result in these countries. Why not change this by charging lower software prices in less wealthy countries?
This presupposes the continuing existence of closed-source software businesses -- but is there a way to make that pricing more fair? Leave your best suggestions in the comments. should commercial software prices be pegged to a country's GDP?
This presupposes the continuing existence of closed-source software businesses -- but is there a way to make that pricing more fair? Leave your best suggestions in the comments. should commercial software prices be pegged to a country's GDP?
Subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of the simple fact that doing this will move the problem. Instead of having piracy in those "poor" countries, you will now have resellers taking advantage of the low price and making a profit in the "rich" country.
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Dear Dryriver,
You present a most sensible idea and I'm sure there are other alternatives along the same basic idea -- which any human with a heart could devise if she/he gives the problem minimal consideration.
I commend you for seeing the problem from the right angle; notice, though, that many will think about the problem from the wrong P.O.V. -- e.g. like the AC above. And that's why nobody did ever come up with an idea to solve the piracy conundrum and still make possible for the poor guys to be honest.:
Re: Subject (Score:2)
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The software developers can use their existing online activation and other copy protection measures to enforce region locks.
Anyone who works around it and defeats the region lock would probably just pirate anyway.
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Yay! More of our beloved DRM!
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So I can't buy something while on holiday in the US, and install on my PC at home in Australia? What if I buy something and move countries? What version do I buy if I live in Australia, travel to the US (and need to use the software there) and take a contract in the Ukraine? Region locks suck, may not be legally enforceable in some countries such as Australia - ACCC Copyright fact sheet used to say this about DVDs, emphasis mine:
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If closed source proprietary software is too expensive, privacy invasive, badly supported, unreliable or insecure and it's use represent an unsound economic burden on a country, simply use and work on the free open source version of it. Not only will you save money but you will also develop computer sciences in your own country, so double plus benefit. It's the old give a man a fish or in this case selling it to them versus teaching them how to fish.
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this ask slashdot is stupid (Score:2)
because.
1) they are doing it(I bought doom 10 euros cheaper than in europe. chinese blurays are all the rage in asia. some of them legit).
2) the price of producing software is not really dependent on how much money the buyer of the software has.
3) are you really so fucking daft that you want to make it illegal to gray import software? seriously? you want a full on trade war or what?
Re:Subject (Score:5, Insightful)
You touch upon the problem why it won't work. It requires rigid regional DRM. And that's not a good long term solution.
There's no doubt in my mind that piracy has increased due to regional DRM, both for DVDs and entertainment software. If you can't get what you want legally while others can, that leads to uprising and war. Even if the war is just one person downloading pirated stuff.
Re:Subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Even beyond rigid DRM, there are two other reasons:
1) you create a situation where high GDP countries have much higher costs to operate (piracy in these places is harder and more likely to result in arrest), and as a result businesses sometimes become impossible to start due to investment factor. It makes us less able to adapt and try new things. This further sets the stage to enable us to continue to exploit labor price differences and exploit workers on both sides of the political border.
2) The vendor needs to recoup his costs (even if we ignore profit, which their investors never do), and we assume the price given to you is at least somewhat based upon development costs, then the low GDP countries aren't paying their way. They're relying on high GDP countries to fund this software so that low GDP countries can leech. I'm not sure anyone wants that particular kind of charity, we prefer it to be out in the open (and tax deductible)
DRM is just the mechanism hollywood came up to enable them to do exactly this.
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For example, University in Country X gets software for low price, and will lease it to students in Country X, while assuring publisher that it can control it is
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Re:Subject (Score:4, Informative)
You mean overseas countries like the Netherlands, Canada and UK [usuncut.com] not to mention all the other European countries are 'ignoring trade pacts' with the US? Huh?
Yes, unlicensed manufacturing is going on in places like India, but the fact of the matter is that the drug companies are charging insane amounts of extra in the US because they can. After all, they seek to make profit, so to them, the price is set carefully to the point that allows them to extract the most profit out of any given economy. The pharmaceutical industry is in a position in which people often have to buy their products or they will die. This is what allows them to ask prices that are way beyond what their actual R & D costs are. Look at the chart from this article [bbc.com] outlining the costs and profits of the largest drug manufacturers. All of them spend more money on marketing than R & D and all if them have large margins, with Pfizer making as much as 43 % proft. These numbers are unheard of in any other industry, and they're solely the result of the american medical system's private nature which robs hospitals and states of effective ways to buy drugs cheaper. Instead of the Federal government or a state buying drugs in bulk, each private hospital chain has to buy them separately. This, combined with the fact that insured individuals don't really care how much the price is as long as it's covered by their insurance is what's put the US so far behind other developed nations in drig-polices and allowed the pharmaceutical industry to become the most profitable industry in the US.
There's no way for example European economies to 'force' these companies to sell to us at a loss. The prices they get selling their drugs to us are still profitable to them, butt because most non-US economies use differing forms of collective bargaining among other sensible policies, we're able to negotiate the prices down. A lot. The common counter-argument to this is that if the US started limiting drug companies' abilities to make as much profit as they currently do, they'd stop R & D and we'd run out of new drugs, but this is false. All of the companies can afford to sell the drugs much cheaper than they currently are being sold in the US and still make solid profit.
Umm. Because of economics, stupid (Score:4, Informative)
> Why don't software makers look at the average income level in a given country -- per capita GDP for example -- and adjust their software prices in these countries accordingly?
Because that's not how supply and demand works.
For the same reason that iPhones and Honda's aren't pegged to GDP... the costs of R&D and production don't change and make a product less costly to produce because it is sold in a country with lower GDP.
Re:Subject (Score:5, Funny)
It is a dumb idea. Just because someone lives in a poor country doesn't mean they are poor. Just because someone lives in a rich country doesn't mean they are rich. It would be more reasonable to consider the income of each person individually, and instead of doing it for a superfluous item like software, it is much more important to do it for critical items like food. I hereby propose that everyone should be required to bring a notarized copy of their tax returns to the grocery store, so Safeway knows how much to charge for the milk.
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Tax returns only show how much legal income someone had 12-24 months ago. They're a very bad basis for making decisions like aid or progressive charges.
And the POTUS would get no milk.
Re:Subject (Score:4, Informative)
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DVDs are cheap enough and have plenty of free or low cost alternatives (whether pirate copies, BitTorrent or Netflix) that it's not worth importing.
Look at medicine (into the US), agricultural machinery, old encryption laws (56 vs 128 bits) etc as well as barriers in countries like Iran, Cuba and N Korea for a better comparison on how regional cost differences impact imports and why it doesn't make a difference to large corporations.
Whether you're in the US or Uganda, as a corporation or government you can
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Region coding is easily and commonly bypassed...
The only reason it's not more common with DVDs is because shipping physical media around the world is more expensive and slower than sending digital files across the internet, so all the pirate DVDs on sale in any given location were probably downloaded and burned locally.
In fact, region coding encourages piracy because there are many titles that are not available in all regions, so people in those regions who would have bought are faced with the choice of pir
Region coding doesn't actually exist (Score:2)
I believe that for over a decade, almost all DVD players have been region-free, the exception being US or North America market.
Else, there are often remote-entered codes to unlock the player.
Of course people won't be interested in a DVD movie in the wrong language(s).
DVD in French-English might work in most of Africa but won't work in South America or Turkey etc. as far as people clearly understanding what's said by characters.
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That's exactly right. Music sellers too could make so much more money if they let us put 50 cents or a quarter on certain songs, though that wouldn't buy it right away, after a period of time and statistic analysis of our purchases they could either call our bluff (we'd actually pay more) or sell it to us for that price. They would make so much more money that way at no cost, by identifying the songs that we would buy, just not for $1.29. This kind of thing should apply to all IP matters, including medicine
Multinationals.. (Score:2, Funny)
Why yes.... my multinational corporation will be happy to purchase 300000 user licenses from our 1 person office in your favorite poor country.
Already like that (Score:5, Insightful)
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It seems that Apple is already doing this, as well. Apple recently raised the prices in the UK by 25%, because of the Brexit.
So this is good news for the British Empire, as their GDP must have grown by 25% since the Brexit!
Economics pundits claim this is the result of the UK rejecting the EU mandated breakfast, consisting of a stale croissant and a thimble full of muddy coffee. The Full English Brexit now consists of baked beans and tea. Whitehall minstrels are planning for extensions including a slap-
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This is a different issue. That price change is due to the GBPUSD exchange rate.
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It seems that Apple is already doing this, as well. Apple recently raised the prices in the UK by 25%, because of the Brexit.
Looks like you are either stupid or a liar. The reason isn't Brexit. The reason is the awful exchange rate, which meant that for six months I as a developer had 20% less in my pocket if someone bought my app on the UK store, compared to someone buying it on the US store. This has changed now, so I will have quite exactly the same amount of money in my pocket, whether the customer is in the US or the UK.
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And the awful exchange rate is directly caused by the vote in the referendum to leave the EU dipshit.
Grey market. (Score:3)
Back in the day, I could get grey market Novell packages for less than the local Netmare distributor's wholesale price.
The world is a global market. You can get a genuine Chinese Fluke DMM for the price of a cheapy. They are blowing their peckers off to serve a market that mostly ignores brands in any case.
Microsoft does (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows pricing is very different in China, for example (rampant piracy).
Because people can travel? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's to stop people from going to Venezuela and buying 10 copies of Final Cut Pro and bringing it back to the US? Unless you are suggesting that they start region locking software, controlling which country you can use software in depending on where you bought it.
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What's to stop people from going to Venezuela and buying 10 copies of Final Cut Pro and bringing it back to the US?
The fact that it's only sold in the App store now?
Beside that point, too much of this reselling will eventually raise the GDP of that country - solving the problem.
Where there is money there is a way (Score:2)
The fact that it's only sold in the App store now?
In which case you just connect to the app store for that country from wherever you are - I have accessed the Canadian store from Europe and the US without a problem in the past. If they eventually block that then you go through proxy and if they try to stop those they just end up playing whack-a-mole. Getting the money to the right store would be the hard part but if someone makes it worth their while I'm sure there will be resellers shipping iTunes gift cards to wherever the software costs significantly m
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For software this would be catastrophic. For anyone who travels software that works on one country and not another will be useless.
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This is the problem. I've seen people on /. complain about the price of textbooks and how they could buy them much cheaper in Asia for example.
I've got 2 copies of K&R's The C Programming Language. One of them is the usual paperback most of us probably have somewhere on our bookshelves and the other is....Chinese I guess. I mean it's in English just like the other, but it's a hard-cover edition and the first few pages have Chinese characters on them. (It's actually a little red book - also little re
Pricing of goods (Score:4, Insightful)
What is wrong with you? Those who produce can ask what they like for what they produce. If it isn't worth it people won't buy. Whether it is worth it or not, there will always be those that will steal what is produced. 'Fair' is where you go to sell your pig, not the means by which you set the price.
Fairness has a role (Score:2)
'Fair' is where you go to sell your pig, not the means by which you set the price.
That's only partly true. If your pricing is extremely unfair and what you produce is essential to people then governments can get involved and laws get changed to cut you profits, especially if you rely on those same laws, such as copyright and patents, to create artificial monopolies. This is happening with the pharmaceutical industry.
In the past Canada has threatened the patent protections of some firms and more recently the US seems to be finally waking up to the crap that these companies are pulling
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I don't really understand your point. Is it that govts can intervene and tell you to sell at a different price? Well, sure. We have all kinds of examples of govt all along a spectrum of interventionalism in markets. Parent was mostly saying that's a load of horseshit and you have every right to sell the fruits of your labor for whatever you want. Your reply really isn't s counter to that, if I'm understanding it correctly.
The patent issue is a tough one and I'm not saying it is set up correctly. But the pur
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I don't really understand your point. Is it that govts can intervene and tell you to sell at a different price?
The OP was arguing that you can charge what you like for your product regardless of whether the price is fair or not: as long as people are willing to pay it you can charge it. My point is that you do have to factor "fair" into your pricing at some level. If you completely ignore it then you will annoy enough people that governments will eventually act, especially if your profits rely on an artificial monopoly created by those governments' laws.
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Your idea would cause drugs to become more unpredictable and thus less effective.
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If you created a cure for HIV then the companies selling existing treatments would likely buy you out, or bury you in court for years...
It's far more profitable to sell ongoing treatments which reduce the symptoms... The existing treatments for HIV can remain profitable for years, whereas you can only sell a cure once. There's no incentive to actually cure something like HIV.
They optimize it clearly (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you allow lower prices for India and China, what's to stop companies from buying the software in those countries and use it in USA?
Because it would be illegal, duh!
Problems solved, once and for all.
captcha: harping
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haha.
it doesn't actually work.
thats why vpn biz is such a booming industry now.. because companies are actually trying to pull this thing off already.
they've been trying to do this exact thing with books, with software, with movies & etc for a long ass time already now.
the askslashdot is from a bizarro world. besides, it's already cheaper in poorer countries as they in general don't have VAT/sales tax anyways. basically this makes everything on steam 7-14% cheaper in any 3rd world country.
Ummm, No (Score:5, Interesting)
They should always use Open Source and just follow the GPL.... ;-)
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If a nontrivial video game is released under a free software license on day one, how might its development be funded?
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I do believe his winky eye emoti made clear he was being facetious.
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They might for an MMO, but not for a single-player or offline multiplayer game.
You can't have it both ways (Score:3)
Why don't software makers look at the average income level in a given country -- per capita GDP for example -- and adjust their software prices in these countries accordingly? Most software makers in the U.S. and EU currently insist on charging the full U.S. or EU price in much poorer countries. "Rampant piracy" and "low sales" is often the result in these countries. Why not change this by charging lower software prices in less wealthy countries?
Because if you want to make cheap goods and flood my market indiscriminately and then call me a protectionist and accuse me of impeding free trade for creating a level playing field, then I should be allowed to freely (as in, I am free to do as I please) sell my software at whatever price I like in your country. That is, if I can't have a level playing field, then neither should you. After all, it's only fair.
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I should be allowed to freely sell my software at whatever price I like in your country.
I think you missed the part where people in those countries simply pirate your software.
A problem without a good solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't really a good solution to this.
If everyone has the same price, then people in poor countries are likely to pirate.
If prices are adjusted so that it is expensive in rich countries and cheap in poor countries, then everyone is going to buy copies in the poor country, one way or another (either via resellers, establishing subsidiaries there, etc)
And if one region locks the software, then that makes people unhappy because they bought the product and want to be able to use it world wide. And it is hard to geolock computers, anyway.
I think just one price and have it constant everywhere is the best option. At least then you don't end up with situations like having everything super expensive in Australia just because.
If they dropped the prices in one poor country, everyone else will complain about "if you can afford to sell if for X in country Y, you must be ripping us off selling it for Z here."
Probably the best strategy is just to have one constant price, let the people in the poor countries pirate, and establish some kind of "pirate redemption" system targeting those areas to get people to spend some small amount to "upgrade" to a legit version. Then set that amount to the reduced amount one would have charged in the poor country in the first place.
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no good solution for this article's problem? free and open source software!
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Unless you're Red Hat and can sell support contracts, or unless you're Google and you can use it to prop up your ad platform and app store, where's the money in developing free software? Case in point: What's the "free and open source" counterpart to, say, Animal Crossing or Smash Bros.?
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Or give away the software for free and sell support regionally if you want fairness that's the best way, your cost won't affect local economies as heavily and users will be able to afford training on your product for free so the software will be self-marketing.
Obviously you need to then compete on the quality of your software instead of lock-in and inertia.
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There isn't really a good solution to this. If everyone has the same price, then people in poor countries are likely to pirate.
And...? People who can't afford a Rolex are more likely to steal a Rolex too, is that a problem you should solve by adjusting the price? The flip side of "lowering prices for poor people" is "gouging wealthy people for being rich". We generally hate companies trying to size up our wallet to see just much they can fleece us for. Isn't that what we'd be asking companies to do? I want to be able to go on Amazon or eBay and get the best product to the best price anyone will offer. That's how capitalism, competi
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Yes there is. It's staring everyone in the face but they don't want to acknowledge it because it amounts to self-sacrifice and tough love. The solution is to help the third world country modernize so their GDP per capita increases until it's roughly on par with developed nations. Then they will be able to afford the software. That's what we were doing with globalization (shifting some developed world jobs to third world countries). But enough people in develo
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And 99 Yen in Japan ($0.87 USD)? And 99 Pesos in Mexico ($4.62 USD)? And 99 Rubles in Russia? ($1.65 USD)
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yeah I think that's what he means; and 99 British pounds (122 USD) and 99 euros (106 USD) and 99 bitcoins (91,520.00 USD) etc..
Really?? (Score:2)
Why limit it to a country. Why not states? Or counties? Cities? In California alone we have many cities well over $100,000/year and others well under $10,000. Which arbitrary geopolitical line do you chose?
More germane to those of us in the US is why not limit the price that can be charged for drugs to the maximum charged anywhere else in the world. If it's profitable there, it can be profitable here.
Bottom line is that it is the legal responsibility of corporations to put their shareholders' interests firs
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More germane to those of us in the US is why not limit the price that can be charged for drugs to the maximum charged anywhere else in the world. If it's profitable there, it can be profitable here.
It is at least mathematically possible to have different prices everywhere, and have the loss of any market make the whole thing unprofitable. From the global point of view, the company's profit is the different between TOTAL sales and TOTAL costs. If manufacturing costs are small relative to the total costs (which include research, development, advertising, and executive salaries and the like), then it is possible that you need silly high prices in some markets and comically low prices is other markets and
From each according to his ability (Score:2)
Of course not (Score:2)
Why stop there? (Score:3)
How about pegging it to my salary? When I'm unemployed I'll buy the biggest IC design CAD package I can!
Bright Idea ? (Score:3)
Even Lenin abandoned it for the New Economic Policy/plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
When Lenin thinks your idea is too communist, it's probably a bad idea.
Their job is to make money not to be fair (Score:2)
It's more profitable to charge a few people a large amount instead of charging a few more people a smaller amount.
If they cut the price to one tenth the price then they have to sell ten times as much just to break even.
Reselling at lower price (Score:3)
US sells software at $200 because if GDP, but it is $30 in Latveria. People will go to Latveria, buy all the copies and ship to USA to resell for a $150 profit each.
Commercial user are not representative (Score:2)
This isn't the way to level the playing field, this would be a means to level the higher GDP countries, by encouraging outsourcing and encouraging domestic wealth transfer to l
We kinda do that (Score:2)
- Our training prices are linked to the GDP, in a few levels. In the lowest band countries this can be 40% of the full price. We do need enough participants however to cover the effort of coming over. Our training is an enabler for the software, it is mainly cost recovery.
- For specific software and services there can be special country promotions to boost adoption also in lower GDP countries. We don't do that explicitely for everything though.
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The Supreme Court is why it won't work. (Score:3)
An approximation of this was done by many publishers with textbooks. The result was importation of the cheaper overseas editions of textbooks into the US. And the US Supreme Court ruled [arstechnica.com] that the First Sale Doctrine covers imported copyrighted works.
Income distribution (Score:2)
Do you really want a gaming company to sell its games to an oligarch in Russia at roughly 3.7 times less the price of what they would cost in the US? Besides, it's not like a game is a vital piece of software to own. And in poorer countries, it's not like everyone owns a computer fast enough to run the latest game, or owns a computer at all.
And where it comes to non-gaming software, there are other ways a company can make sure its software goes to people who can afford it. It can create student licenses, la
Bad Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
If this is a government imposed price control then not only is this a bad idea but one that has lead to the destruction of entire nations and killed many. Price controls enforced by the government do not allow the market to adjust pricing to meet supply and demand. Without proper market pricing we get hoarding, black markets, etc. Price controls is socialism. In socialism people wait in lines for bread, in capitalism bread is lined up waiting for people.
If a company chooses to control prices based on local markets then expect much of the same. If software is cheap in some nation where people don't make much money then expect a black market to pop up to buy low locally and then sell high somewhere else. Software makers can try to enforce this GDP based pricing with location enforcement of some kind but that's not too difficult to fake for the properly motivated.
Didn't textbook publishers already try this? They'd sell textbooks in other English speaking nations for cheaper than in the USA in order to compete better and/or comply with socialistic price controls on books. They tried putting different covers on those books but that didn't stop people in the USA from buying them, the content was still the same. Efforts to make the content different enough to matter costs money, negating any profit motive in selling the same books at different prices.
I cannot fault people for wanting to make a profit on their products. What they seem to fail to understand is that the world has gotten a lot smaller. I've gone to online retailers and orders products from Taiwan and Australia before. They arrived in my mailbox a week later. If I ordered from a domestic seller I'd sometimes get it overnight, and that has some value to me. If the price difference is large enough I'll wait that week if I can.
When talking about bread, textbooks, and so on this is a physical product. Software is not a physical product, the media might be but when is the last time you saw actual media in a software box? When was the last time you actually bought a "box" of software?
Just a bad idea. If actually implemented anywhere I'd expect it to die quickly.
Offshoring (Score:4, Informative)
Options (Score:2)
Poor nations then have the option not to enforce software and copyright laws.
Don't peg anything to GDP. Just keep offering US brands at US$100 or 1000 or some other fee.
Digital enforcement is expensive in every nation. Once a nation is very low cost with exchange rates, whats keeping users globally from buying in that nation?
Per nation price enfacement with activation and per nation ip tracking per account?
Insert 25c; Slashdot the Great tell your fortune (Score:3)
> This presupposes the continuing existence of closed-source software businesses
Slashdot: declaring the imminent doom of proprietary software for 20 years
Let us rephrase (Score:2)
Should extremely targeted software be priced according to the broadest possible metric?
All of this should essentially be up to the software developer, to price things according to who their customers are in various markets.
Now what I have read about is some app developers out of a spirit of charity, making apps free in some extremely poor markets (like Africa and India) to help out the population there.
Leasing business software is the way to go (Score:2)
From the perspective of the business that makes and sells the software, the best option is leasing. And to some degree this already goes on. This requires an always on connection, but it lets you expand into other markets at discounts and much lower cost entry points (as long as it is still profitable, which for software, once it is created, sale of said software is essentially 100% profit) without having to worry about profiteers taking the discounts that you offer to some and spreading them back to your
Wrong Metric (Score:2)
GDP isn't the right metric. If we used GDP the price would still be too high in developing countries. The correct metric is GDP per capita, or purchasing power parity.
Problem is you would need to region lock the software then through yet more DRM.
Not everyone in the third world is poor. (Score:2)
The problem was caused by government... (Score:3)
is there a way to make that pricing more fair?
Reduce copyright duration to two years and the "problem" will go away.
~Loyal
yeah right! (Score:2)
Options (Score:2)
1. Stop honoring BS US copyright law. Given enough countries, the whole copyright export concept will be in jeopardy.
2. Go open-source. $0+(local time) is always pegged to GDP.
Ekronomics says "Hell, yes" (Score:2)
Per https://ello.co/shanen0/post/n... [ello.co] the software that increases productivity is investment and extremely poor societies can't afford those investments because essential production is already absorbing all the available resources. Or in other words, there's no sense in trying to squeeze blood from a turnip when he doesn't even have a turnip.
Entertainment category software is different and there is no rationale I can see for discounting it. Right now I'm having trouble thinking of any software that would qu
Re:Gouge the middle class to make them poor (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds more fair when you say charge less in poorer countries. However when you turn it around, it is gouge the people in less poor countries.
Especially given that GDP is not evenly distributed among the population. The bulk of the added revenue from technology driven productivity improvements (at least in the US) has gone to the denizens of the C suites and the government, not to the workers. GDP has soared while real-inflation adjusted after-tax income has stagnated or dropped for decades.
That's much of why a nuclear family in the '50s got along fine on a single income and a two-parent family now involves both parents working and the kids in child care, and the bulk of kids are in "non-traditional" family arrangements and/or on some form of public assistance.
So "gouge the developed world's middle class" is indeed what such a GDP-based scheme would accomplish.
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That's much of why a nuclear family in the '50s got along fine on a single income and a two-parent family now involves both parents working and the kids in child care,
Of course, the nuclear family of the 1950s had:
a 1200 (not 2200) sqft house,
formica (not granite) counters,
stainless steel appliances,
automatic dishwasher,
automatic dryer,
*might* have had a TV (not a 54" LCD),
car without multiple built-in DVD player, infotainment center, ABS brakes, half a dozen air bags, computer controlled *everything*, 2000W stereos,
computers,
smartphones,
game consoles,
etc,
etc,
ad nauseum.
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Nuclear family of the 1950s usually started when the parents were in their 20's. Dad working a factory job, stay-at-home mom, living in a 1200 square foot house with formica countertops.
In 2016 millenials in their 20s are either living in the basement of their parents' 2200 square foot house or doubling/tripling up in an apartment with roommates. Yes they have cheap electronics and granite countertops in their parents house or their apartment, but are they really doing better than their 1950s counterparts?
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Give the SW to low GDP countries for cheap. Then watch the US and the EU outsource jobs to the low GDP countries because they're so inexpensive.
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Same for prescription drugs - in those cases, the gov'ts negotiate the rates or threaten to make generic or just allow rampant piracy.
For what my late father paid for a one-month supply of his maintenance drugs in the U.S. he got a six-month supply from India. The only problem with buying from India is that the package sits in New York customs warehouse for a month before transferring to the USPS for final delivery.
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Many people worry more about quality control with Indian pharmaceuticals.
My father had no problems with the drugs he ordered from India every six months for five years.
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From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
The most evil idea ever committed to paper. It's killed hundreds of millions.
But hey, it sounds good and makes your heart swell with pride, right?
If you can't tell the difference between "good ideas" like "Turn the other cheek" or "Do unto others as you would like for yourself" or "Make America great" and the abuse of such ideas by evil people for their own gain, then you are certainly part of the problem.
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Turn the other cheek? Only good for achieving matching bruises. Ethically, it can be said that returning that slap is better as it may prevent the slapper from abusing others.
Do unto others is a good life goal, unless you keep doing so after getting screwed over by those others. Then it's simply
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MAGA? Make Americans Grope Again?
Monica Lewinsky called. She wants her blue dress back.
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No can do. Didn't you get the memo? We're only using American-made products from now on.
#AmericaFirst
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.whitehouse.gov/ame... [whitehouse.gov]
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No, but at least your local economies impact the price. You pay $50k for a Windows Server license anywhere in the world. You pay $120k for a SysAdmin in the US, 20k for one in rural India.
The impact of the license cost results in Windows Server having a TCO twice the amount (compared to local economies) in India than the US (to small businesses at least). With Linux you still need the SysAdmin, but your TCO compared to local economies is equalized.
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You're omitting the fact that Canada is already subject to such regional pricing on many products making it far more than the 50% you quote.
Everything from books to music to cars to other items all priced far higher than the exchange rate would justify.
And to add insult to injury, we spend a fortune to enforce trade barriers with the sole purpose of keeping it this way.
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There's also the Canadian edition at 200% of the US price, so don't feel too ripped off.