Actually, Andir, to say that monopolies are bad and that we should force them to release all rights to open standards is ridiculous. I'm an A student in a top rated economics program (by way of qualifying my disagreement with you).

For one thing, saying that monopolies are bad is nearly a normative statement--rather than the positive statement economics upholds.

Instead, what you should've said is that monopolies are inefficient: they deliberately produce less than society would optimally like them too. This leads to deadweight loss, and a social welfare problem.

As you pointed out, there are various methods of increasing total surplus--and thus increasing, in this case, consumers surplus (i.e., satisfaction/happiness). This relies upon the assumption that consumers are happier when they can have more of what they want: which, optimally, occurs in a perfectly competitive environment where the market naturally is driven to produce a zero economic profit in the long-run. This is the point, too, where consumers marginal benefit equals the producers marginal cost.

With monopolies, a producer deliberately produces less than society wants, at a higher price. They do this to maximize their profit.

You can try to overcome monopolistic problems through policy, taxes, and subsidies.

THE KEY HERE, is that all those solutions themselves incur deadweight loss, and thus are inefficient, and thus, according to your wording, are bad.

The punchline to the story I'm telling is that it IS possible to increase social welfare (total social surplus) by, for example, subsidizing monopolies (as we see, perhaps, with oil and gas companies--encouraging them to produce more, making people happier), but any solution oriented behavior just incurs financial losses.

So you can see that attempting to defeat monopolies can be a zero sum game. What you gain in total surplus (how happy your consumers are), you may lose in real dollar inefficiency.

Monopolies aren't "bad," they are inefficient for society. They exist as a natural phenomena of a well functioning marketplace--one with strict property rights, consistent public institutions, reliable rule of law, etc. What you seem to be recommending would, almost certainly, result in LESS PRODUCTION by Microsoft, and thus, in the long-run less social welfare for the 90% of the world which uses their products--as they cease to innovate because it has become less profitable for them.

Um, Apple, I hate to break it to you, but we--the consumers--won't be going with the DVR solution. Too many of us have cable and satellite DVR boxes that are less and less used as the studios start giving us what we've always wanted: on-demand TV and movies over the internet. We're starting to realize that it's not that hard to plug in our Macbooks and Dells into our spiffy new HDTVs--especially when there's tons of "free" legitimate content available and more and more on the way. No more issues with the DVR missing our show, or one of our roommates skipping the show we want to record because the box doesn't have enough tuners or intelligence or space to handle the tasks we need it to. Oh, and it's so much cheaper than paying for cable or satellite that goes unused.

The future is FREE, Apple, I hope you're listening.

I have a Dish DVR but for various reasons have taken to streaming TV from Hulu or ABC through my laptop and onto my HDTV. Works like a charm, and I never miss a show, and I can watch them whenever I want to, and more of them are offered in HD resolution than Dish provides locally. As soon as someone makes this whole internet-TV thing really intuitive and easy to use, Dish and DirectTV and Apple and everyone else is deep doo doo.

I'd like an invite too!

Actually, this thing we call life is the best example of a "mixed reality" experiment: participants who may or may not be "real" (even according to their own definitions of the word) in a context which may or may not be real. Our experience of reality is merely the interpretation by our brain of the data gathered from five sources of input (our senses).

I run Windows, and my experience has been that most "shareware" is garbage. The rest of it is decent enough to use occasionally--but not good enough to use frequently or rely on. For instance, I found a journaling application which had some neat features. I didn't buy it because 1)it crashed, a lot; 2)it had one too many rough edges; 3)it cost way too much (they were charging $40 for it--way too much for an application with so many problems); 4)I didn't really need the unique features that they were trying to charge so much for. Those unique features would've been nice, but not $40 nice.

In general, I can't afford the software I pirate. Most companies don't seem serious about tapping the economic potential of individual users (looking at you here Adobe). This is evident from the fact that they price their software at stratospheric levels. Sure, maybe it's a "fair" price from their prospective, but not from mine. My perspective is that of I need X, Y, Z, A, B, C in order to have a well-rounded system. If I paid for all that software, I'd be out, oh...$4000+. Not very realistic for the average consumer/hobbyist. Heck, a lot of the software I pirate I use infrequently--if at all. Photoshop is a good example. If, however, I was to start making an income using any one of those pirated applications then I'd buy them. But for the occasional use it just doesn't make sense to pay so much. Plus every company prices their software for purchase by other companies. They probably do this to prevent companies from buying software at consumer prices.

I'd say that it's rare that freeware/donationware/shareware/etc is everything it needs to be to be worth buying/donating. It needs to be used frequently (probably at least several times a week), it needs to be largely bug-free, it needs to be refined in its presentation, it needs to do what it sets out to do and do it well, it needs to be truly FAIRLY priced according to what people are actually buying it for.

Another good example: Final Draft (screenwriting software). It's too expensive for a hobbyist, but probably very reasonably priced for anyone who's actually making a living writing screenplays.

The key here is that DRM can be--and often is--cracked. DRM means relatively nothing. It's like hiring a security guard to stand by the "honor system" candy basket: It costs a lot of money, time, and effort to create and maintain in the face of dogged efforts by many who demand access.

I'm no economist, but my suspicion is that the potential losses from thievery of non-DRMed work are smaller than the costs of creating and maintaining DRM. If anyone is an economist, I'd be willing to revise this position should sufficient evidence be provided.

My suggestion is to stop trying to plug the holes in the dam with our fingers. Do what is afforable; find the careful balance between spending too much for relatively little effect, and spending too little versus too much lost.

I hate DRM for two reasons: it tends to screw the consumer out of their perceived rights, and I don't think it makes sense economically.

Deirdre, I think you're wrong about Obopay versus Textpayme being like a windowed interface versus command-line. The whole reason Textpayme went with text messaging as the way for people to pay one another is that it's extremely familiar. In our world of high speed tech familiarity is much more important in winning over users then the BEST technical solution. It's like Betamax versus VHS; the BEST way to do something doesn't always (or even frequently) win. Even myself as an advanced user of most tech finds it annoying to have to download and install apps on my cell. True, text messaging is by no means perfect either, but it's a heck of a lot more convenient and ultimately usable then an entirely separate app. Just my two cents.

Hopin to win. Duh. :)

Here goes something again!

Wow, a phone a day! That's pretty sweet of y'all... give the dice a kiss of good luck for me!