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 Originally Posted by Renton
I think we can basically agree that Wal-Mart has the monopoly on the big box supermarket/department store in most parts of the country. And yes they are of such a scale that it is difficult for them to face real competition. However, as soon as they begin to gouge prices, the incentive for a Wal-Mart competitor to emerge would be so large that billions would pour in from investors. People argue that their service is declining, but as we see there is also a market for big box retail that doesn't have such shitty service, which is why Target and Best Buy exist.
Anyway the threat of present and future competition, along with the value of Wal-Mart's reputation, keeps Wal-Mart basically in check from doing anything crazy along the lines of what anti-monopolists believe.
I wasn't using Walmart as an example of price gouging. And yes, as long as Target is what it is, Walmart's monopolistic attributes won't get worse than they already are, but that is entirely irrelevant
You are expressing irrelevant platitudes. Apple holds enough of the market that they have a larger profit margin than a comparable, normal company due to charging more due to their monopolistic attributes. They're basically a really mini De Beers in this regard. I'll try to not follow more along this line because I can't find my source that discusses this with Apple specifically
Your arguments assume rationality and fairness by all players in the economy, assume rather simplistic behaviors of economic dynamics, and are often red herrings. I'll make a couple quick points to try to exemplify that.
If iPhones were too expensive then there'd be less demand for them and Apple would lower the price.
Not necessarily. There are a very wide variety of factors, several of which are at play, that have allowed iphone prices to be higher than they should and still have just as many people buying them
Sellers look to get the maximum price for their products and buyers look to pay the minimum price or find alternatives.
Yes, they "look to", but it never actually works that way. I gave two examples with De Beers and Amazon that do the exact opposite. De Beers charges magnitudes greater than any sort of supply and demand imperative while Amazon charges so little that they'll eventually go out of business if they keep doing it for much longer. Each of these companies do them for many different reasons, and they have nothing to do with the rationality you wish existed in the economy and everything to do with exploiting monopolistic attributes
It is essential to Apple's survival that they charge the optimal price for an iPhone that will extract the maximum EV.
But they're not, therefore it isn't essential to their survival. You are again conflating business with economics. Apple's "maximum EV" is not the same as optimal pricing economically
If they charge somewhere else along the price/volume bell-curve, then they cede an advantage to Samsung right then and there.
Which is a business issue, not an economics one
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