Oppressing Customers By Cutting Prices?
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It is perhaps the single most asinine claim in all of antitrust law, if not in all of economics: the idiotic assertion that lowering prices can somehow be bad for consumers.
But the notion just keeps showing up in malcontents' playlists:
First and foremost, could someone please explain how, exactly, lowering prices hurts consumers?
Second, please point out where, precisely, in Apple's EULA, TOU, etc., they promise never to lower prices in the future?
Third, what exactly are the "market conditions" at issue here? Who, other than Apple and its customers, gets to be the arbiter of which "market conditions" matter, how they matter, and what they "require" Apple to do?
Fourth, a consumer has the ultimate power over a business: the power not to buy from it. What greater power could one possibly want? Steve Jobs (unlike the government) cannot hold a gun to your head and say, "Buy this!" What better definition of "impotence" could one conceive?
There are other elements to the lawsuit (e.g., the two-year service agreement, termination fees). But this case would be as good a time as any to slay once and for all the fantasy-land dragon of "underselling." Lower prices are better for consumers. Always.
(Via Catallarchy.)
But the notion just keeps showing up in malcontents' playlists:
Apple Inc., along with its chief executive and exclusive U.S. iPhone wireless partner AT&T, have been hit with a new lawsuit from a disgruntled customer who charges the trio with a variety of offenses stemming from the recent iPhone price cut.A few hasty stitches:
...
Li included in her 8-page complaint historical stock graphs that show Apple's share price to have risen in between the time it released iPhone in late June and when the company instated the price cut. She argues that this is proof that there was no sound reason for the cut, which she equated to "underselling."
"Market conditions did not require Apple to change its price," Li's attorney, C. Jean Wang of Wang Law Offices, PLLC wrote in the filing. "iPhone was selling very well because Apple's stocks [sic] were increasing since August 16, 2007 and rose as high as $144.16 on September 4, 2007, the day before Apple announced that it was cutting the price of iPhone."
First and foremost, could someone please explain how, exactly, lowering prices hurts consumers?
Second, please point out where, precisely, in Apple's EULA, TOU, etc., they promise never to lower prices in the future?
Third, what exactly are the "market conditions" at issue here? Who, other than Apple and its customers, gets to be the arbiter of which "market conditions" matter, how they matter, and what they "require" Apple to do?
Fourth, a consumer has the ultimate power over a business: the power not to buy from it. What greater power could one possibly want? Steve Jobs (unlike the government) cannot hold a gun to your head and say, "Buy this!" What better definition of "impotence" could one conceive?
There are other elements to the lawsuit (e.g., the two-year service agreement, termination fees). But this case would be as good a time as any to slay once and for all the fantasy-land dragon of "underselling." Lower prices are better for consumers. Always.
(Via Catallarchy.)
Related Posts (on one page):
- Oppressing Customers By Cutting Prices?
- iOpoly?
- Eurocrats Continue to Harass Apple over iTunes Pricing
Posted by Kip on
3 October 2007
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