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Sad then that fines like this could totally be calculated into the cost of business



Why is it sad? Doesn't that mean that the company's ability to circumvent regulations is proportional to the consumer's lack of value for those regulations + willingness to purchase the product at the cost and rate necessary?

Otherwise, the underlying assumption is that regulations on industries are always in the best interest of the market, even when the industry changes OR that regulations change fast enough to adapt to the market. Both of these, I think, are demonstrably false.


I'd argue that whether the majority of participants would happily be involved in a transaction is irrelevant to whether that transaction is good - often, either that transaction has externalities or the result of nearly everyone agreeing to a certain type of transaction is that a minority is left out of something important.

For example, for the moment, Uber are running a version of their service for people with physical disabilities - this is probably solely in response to the argument that lack of regulation would result in no such service existing. If there were no threat of regulation, would they run it? Probably not, it's probably not very cost-effective.

The majority would probably happily use cheap, dirty energy for as long as they can, but what externalities does that have? If it were possible, would it be OK to run such a power station against the law?


Working backwards: I agree with you that the free-market circumvention of regulation is bad in certain areas, like medical testing and utilities. For Uber, the threat of regulation (and the ensuing bad publicity - a market force) did inspire it's adaptation for the disabled. That's why I'm not in favor of eliminating any regulation in industries. But anti-trust is (and correct me if I'm wrong) concerned with keeping the market open for the benefit of consumers. If customers choose to buy ebooks for a significant mark-up because they like the way Apple delivers them, I don't see how the price fixing harms the market, especially considering the users were not limited to Apple's service on their own device. (Were there Apple iBooks exclusives at the marked up rate? Is that the problem?)

I understand that Apple violated the letter of the law with the price fixing. But I'm having trouble seeing the actual harm it did to the market. And I'm especially having difficulty feeling "sad" that Apple was able to bundle, into the cost of the ebooks, the potential fines for violating it. Consumers were given a product for a price they deemed fair in a market more competitive than before Apple entered it.


> If customers choose to buy ebooks for a significant mark-up because they like the way Apple delivers them, I don't see how the price fixing harms the market

From some reading, I think the issue is basically that as a result of Apple's collusion with the publishers, Amazon could no longer sell without significant markup - thus price-fixing. I could be wrong.




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