Comment by blitz_skull
3 years ago
Uh... Pretty sure the printer industry is holding literally no one hostage. As mentioned in several comments—this industry is dead.
3 years ago
Uh... Pretty sure the printer industry is holding literally no one hostage. As mentioned in several comments—this industry is dead.
My point is a general one - the printer market is doing exactly what all elastic markets do.
It's what they do if there is not a healthy market with lots of innovation and competition. It is a dieing (of maybe stagnant and on the decline) market where the few remaining are squeezing out the last remaining drops of revenue.
Competition isn't allowed to flourish when the market leaders use their runaway profits to buy up any and all possible contenders. My point is that this exact process can be seen across our economy, because anti-competitive behaviour is inherent to the economic system we live in. This is not controversial.
1 reply →
Well, without hyper-focusing on printers, I fail to see the call to action here. I don't understand why "this is not an economy that works for ordinary people".
I consider myself pretty ordinary and my life is impacted almost 0 by the forces of elastic markets.
Inequality is getting worse and worse across the west:
https://equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic-inequality-uk
Businesses are choosing to use their profits to perform stock buybacks instead of innovating or improving standards for their workers:
https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-for...
Meanwhile the cost of living is going through the roof:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
And pay is not catching up, further aggravated by inflation:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1272447/uk-wage-growth-v...
In the UK we also have a 54% increase in the residential cost of energy (within the context of extreme profiteering from energy manufacturers):
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/03/business/energy-prices-uk...
And 9.1% inflation:
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/uk-inflation-rate-hits-...
This is true across the world. I'm not sure what your life is like, but it sure as hell doesn't match the lived experience of many.
2 replies →
Then you, by definition, are not ordinary.
The average person is impacted by capitalist market economy shenanigans on a continuous basis on nearly everything required to stay alive.
It isn't dead. I use my printer now more than ever for printing postage labels.
Will home printer usage decline? Probably yes, but just like I have a home phone that I barely use, people will probably keep a printer around just in case.