Quote:
Originally Posted by gacook
IMHO, that's a huge part of the problem right there. $750 for a phone--a PHONE!! Not to mention the fact that 73% of that price is pure profit...
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Many of us can remember when TV was free. No cable, just an antenna on the roof that your dad adjusted once in a while. Four or five channels and if nothing was on you read a book, built a model, played a board game or--GASP--went outside. The hard-line home telephone system was amazing. The sound quality was as if you were in the same room. Wasn't expensive either.
The business school boys saw all that and saw that it needed monetizing. Free television? ARE YOU CRAZY? We must make people pay for it. Bell Telephone is a huge monopoly? We must break it apart and spread the money around. (Down goes quality, up goes the price.) The airlines propped up by regulation? Tear it down! We must get people off of Greyhound buses and onto 737s!
Etc., etc.
The baby-boomers who grew up in the 1950s playing Monopoly with their siblings (and up-ending the table when they didn't win) went on to get their MBAs and into business. There were so many of them (and boomer law school grads too) that they had to blow up the old paradigm to make enough money for all of them. Explode the old system and monetize the remains. Down goes quality, up goes the price.