Comments on: How not to think about music, Part XVII

By: Vincent Clement

Vincent Clement — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:09:49 +0000

Cost does not equal price. In a competitive market, it's hard to justify a high price when MC is at or near zero. Other competitors will just undercut your price, which will drive the price towards zero.

By: mathewi

mathewi — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:14:01 +0000

Thanks, Chris — it's true that the American Heritage dictionary (and the
Webster's) admit that both can be used, but I think they have weakened on
that point in part because people continually use the words interchangeably
when they actually mean different things. Stanch means to stop the flow and
staunch means dependable — two different meanings, two different words.
I'm sticking to my guns.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:33:42 +0000

This isn't really relevant, but stanch and staunch are variants, not completely different words for different meanings. American Heritage says 'Staunch is more common than stanch as the spelling of the adjective. Stanch is more common than staunch as the spelling of the verb.'

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:09:45 +0000

Thanks for the link!

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:51:06 +0000

Well, on the marxist theory this goes back to something that Matthew had said to me in an ealrier thread so I apologize if I implied that you were the source of it. I don't have any problem wih artists submitting to this kind of business model (and as I said above I don't necessarily know that it is wrong) my problem stems from the idea that they should be forced to simply because there is no way to control piracy.

On the 0 point all I can say is in every school of thought be in physics, natural science or economics there are special states at which the laws that otherwise apply no longer make sense. In Physics its the speed of light and in mathematics its when you get to 0. Why is it that you can divide by any other number?

Beyond that I would say that just logically your argument doesn't follow as being necessarily true. The cost of goods are always above their marginal cost even though they tend to fall in line. So if the marginal cost falls to zero that doesn't mean that the price does.

Again, my argument coming into this thread wasn't to say “you're wrong and he's right” but to say “he's not a fool for disagreeing with you” No matter how much you argue this no one side is going to come out as completely right which is why its so important for each side to show respect for the other.