unfair
adj.
not based on or behaving according to the principles of equality and justice
—-
Recently, the company which makes the Twitter client software Tweetie was acquired by Twitter.
Apparently, Twitter announced that they were going to make the client available for free, because I stumbled on to an online forum where a bunch of morons were complaining that they had previously paid for Tweetie and now it was “unfair” that it was going to be available for free. Unbelievable.
Here was what I posted:
It is depressing to see how economically illiterate people are these days. When you buy anything. *ANYTHING* It may be made available *in the future* for 1) the same price, 2) a higher price, 3) a lower price. You are free to incorporate your expectation of the price movement into your decision, but when you pay X for Y at time T you are saying, “at this *moment*, I value Y at X and I would rather have Y than X for potential future spending on some Z.” End of story.
I purchased an Apple ][ in 1978 for ~ $2,000. I purchased a 17″ MBP (refurb) last year for ~ $2,000. Should I be crying and whining “I’ll never buy another Apple product! How dare they, in the future, create a product that is at least a billion times more powerful and functional and sell if for the same price! They should charge at least $20,000 for it, the bastards!”
The idea prices always go up over time is false. It only appears to happen because the USG steadily (though rapidly now) prints money and thus creates inflation. It is *not* natural and the fact that everyone just assumes that it happens doesn’t make it so. (there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, see above)
If the USG stopped printing money (sound money) prices would actually generally decrease over time as innovation and productivity made companies able to provide better products and services at lower prices. You can see this in competitive markets like tech. There would, of course, be price spikes in periods of high demand and low supply, but that’s *good* because it helps balance the people who most desire something with its supply.
Tags: economics
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