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In many European countries, this problem was resolved by what I feel is mostly student pressure. Our student union (for lack of better word) owned printing equipment and worked with most professors to do exactly what's suggested in this article: most professors wrote their own books (not 140 pages, though). Most of my textbooks were between 2 and 7 EUR, which I'm led to believe is approximately at cost. Occasionally, a particular textbook was "recommended", but there would always be ample library copies available, and often you wouldn't _really_ need it. I'd have about 4-6 courses per semester, so I'd spend maybe 25-30 EUR on our own textbooks. Occasionally I'd have to shell out for a traditional textbook, and that would utterly dominate that semester's materials budget.

The future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

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Italian, and fellow european here. When I started university (1999, I think) there were still plenty of Big Expensive Books (I recall my Chemistry one was like that).

The "student pressure" materialized in the form of doing illegal copies of the books. This used to be totally illegal, but incredibly easy.

At some point the legislative environment changed so that photocopying up to a decent percentage of the books was considered legit. Suddenly, low price books started to bubble up everywhere.

So, if you don't have this yet, start lobbying your parliament for a "fair use" textbook copying policy, publishers will follow.

Thank you.

In the US it feels to me like it's gone the opposite way. The textbook publishers are increasingly able to block people from using pirated books, or even buying used books, by including one-use online codes in the books. Then they can raise the prices because there's no other market.

Don't ask me what I think the punishment should be, for devising this system, or for a professor requiring the use of such a thing in a course.

My wife works for a major textbook publisher. Not all those free textbooks or cheap textbooks are the same quality as the ones produced by big evil corporations. Frequently, when looking at competitors books, she will find more typos, fewer citations, out of date studies with small sample sizes, poor quality graphics, and sometimes just wrong information. Big books are expensive because the companies frequently worry a lot about these things and also spend lots of effort on the pedagogy of the text.

However, management is not good, the commercial model frequently prioritizes things which are not good for students, and the industry is still shedding revenue. In an effort to change that, they seems to be doubling down on digital products, which are still less popular than print by several orders of magnitude.

Looking back, I can think of one or two professionally-done textbooks I used that were really good. (The Campbell biology books in particular were stellar.) The amount of work that must have gone in to their creation was enormous, and I am thankful for them.

But there were not enough of them. For every worth-the-purchase, there were a dozen of middling to genuine crap quality, and every single one was painfully expensive.

I genuinely feel for the good folks that I know are stuck in the system. But the current model can't die fast enough.

Was in the students union for my faculty. We pulled out all stops to make things as efficient and cheap as possible(we actually sold them below cost because we found other ways to subsidise them). 10ish euro maximum performance semester for all the textbooks that were used in the classes, and printing thesis was 50 % of the next cheapest option... if we had doubled our prices.

We also did "university politics", basically creating pressure for professors to make good textbooks. I typeset one myself for a professor who wanted to "beat" another one.

Join your students union, union or local cooperatives and cooperative oriented parties people. Infrastructure and necessities should be run like that or by government institutions.

>We also did "university politics", basically creating pressure for professors to make good textbooks. I typeset one myself for a professor who wanted to "beat" another one.

Out of curiosity, how would his textbook beat another colleague's?

Popularity, I assume; which is probably why he put "beat" in scare quotes.

Nicer diagrams, better structure, better writing, students being happy with the script, students grades

Whenever I was in an international class, the study language was english, the textbooks were American. Extremely dense and horrible to read tombs. In my early courses most of the material was in swedish. Textbooks were a tenth of the size and had at least some personality. Some of them were quite enjoyable. Those were readable.

s/tombs/tomes/ [0]

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tome

I think the meaning is more accurate with tombs.

Thanks for the correction. Seems it's too late to edit though. Guess the somewhat suitable typo will have to stand. :)

As a fellow European, my experience is similar (though our prices were higher but still substantially lower than the big-name commercial publishers.), but I suspect it would never fly in the US (communism, boo!).

It just needs to be spun as a free market thing (the professors are entrepeneurs and competition brings down prices) :) And then cross your fingers nobody gets sued into oblivion.

Textbooks which are essentially the same are available in europe for like 1/3 of the price of the american versions. I bought $70 books for my master's courses in Sweden that would have been $300 in the US (where I did my undergrad). The "invisible hand" of capitalism at work!

> I bought $70 books for my master's courses in Sweden that would have been $300 in the US (where I did my undergrad). The "invisible hand" of capitalism at work!

I personally believe free markets ("invisible hand" of capitalism) work well in nearly all cases (yes, there exist cases of market failure, but these are IMHO rare). The problem rather is that copyright laws prevent a free market, since the copyright holder has a monopoly (i.e. opposite of free market) on the work.

By that logic we should get rid of property, since the property holder has a monopoly on the property. I would put "(i.e. opposite of a free market)" sarcastically, but I'm being serious. Go read an economics text book on the definition of a free market, and while you are at it, what properties they have (muh freedom is not even a primary one) that make us want them so much, and what the requirements are (natural monopolies are a problem, but copyright and property are not monopolies; run-away patents are though) to have them.

The person you are replying to is wrong, the free market is what allows for corrections that are starting to happen (e.g. cheaper better books, student groups publishing their own books, etc.) it's just that Sweden has a free market with better conditions than many free markets in the U.S. so they get faster reactions in their prices.

But you are wrong in a worse way, you don't even understand what you are advocating for.

Edit: To expand on the copyright is property argument. Copyright allows you to own the result of your work. If someone happens to make something very very similar without ever seeing your copyrighted work, they have the copyright to their work, and you to yours. Like property you only have that which is yours (e.g. if I built a house on my land that looks exactly like my neighbors, I still own my property and the house; but if I took their house and put it on my property I wouldn't); this is why certain techniques like Clean Room development allow companies to build very similar products that are all protected by copyrights assigned to each company. The problem you have is with patents which allow the patent holder to claim all work done that matches the patent (even if the patent holder never actually made something that matched the patent; which is especially absurd).

> e.g. if I built a house on my land that looks exactly like my neighbors, I still own my property and the house; but if I took their house and put it on my property I wouldn't

Uhm, no, that's exactly what copyright prevents (or tries to, anyhow).

Again that is the difference between parents and copyrights. With a patent you can't make a copy. With copyrights you can't claim you made something. For example if I see a dress in a magazine I can make one, what I cannot claim is that it is Dolce and Gabbana...

> if I see a dress in a magazine I can make one, what I cannot claim is that it is Dolce and Gabbana

That's actually trademark, which is distinct from copyright or patent.

And notably, clothing designs are not copyrightable, because they are "useful articles", not just creative expressions. https://www.copyright.gov/register/va-useful.html

Patent: Practical invention, prevents sale even of independent re-invention. 17-20 years.

Copyright: Tangible expression of original authorship, prevents duplication and derivation except for fair use, common stereotypes, etc. Does not prohibit independent re-invention, does not prevent re-use of ideas, just the expression. Has grown to progressively longer term (currently life + 70)

Trademark: Prevents false claims of source of product, even of "confusingly" similar designs. Includes "trade dress" (packaging/presentation). Valid as long as the trademark is used.

Design patent: hybrid - prevents duplication of ornamental design of a functional product, so it is like copyright, but has a duration similar to patent - 14-15 years.

Again, you are thinking patents or trademarks.

My house may look the same, but it's been built by different people, different electricians, on different land. It probably has a different internal structure, different materials, and slightly different external marks, because it was rebuilt from the ground up.

Copyright would apply if I used the exact same blueprints, but if I hired an architect to make blueprints with the same external design as another house that would be similar to clean room design and not a violation of copyright. Like how Google can make a copy of the Java API (they only got hit for having the same implementation written by the guy who wrote the version oracle had copyrighten in the first place).

In the analogy it would be theft if I took your house, put it on my land, and claimed it was mine. And that's what it is to commit criminal copyright violation (e.g. you distribute copies for profit, claiming you own it). Yes in the digital world copies don't deprive the other of anything tangible, but like stealing a house, it does deprive them of the work that was invested to build that expression in the first place.

An important distinction between physical and intellectual property is that physical is naturally exclusive, while intellectual is not. If I use a house for something, you cannot use it for something else without disturbing me. On the other hand my using some technology does not prevent anyone else from doing the same. (Although I may prefer to have an exclusive right for obvious reasons.)

Maybe it could be a good idea to somehow recognize intellectual property as property but end that exclusive part. E.g. for books make publishing agreements public offers instead of private contracts. Just a wild idea, of course :)

> On the other hand my using some technology does not prevent anyone else from doing the same.

Yes, however, for the same reason people can own summer homes they don't use for half a year and retain that exclusivity - even though it wouldn't disturb the people - is because they worked for that. They built it, or paid someone who did. We allow people to enforce their exclusive rights on property even when it wouldn't disturb them to let others use it.

Similarly, if I spend a billion dollars building a piece of technology, I should be able to own that. And decide who gets to use it, even if giving it away to everyone wouldn't disturb me. If someone else built their own version of my software (like building their own summer home) they could give theirs away for free (open source) or sell it. But if they broke into my summer home, rented it out, and then left everything exactly the way it was, that's still illegal because they profited from my property, my work.

If you believe in private property (rather than say personal property, which would allow you to own a house exclusive to other people, but not to own multiple properties and only use one at a time) it's hypocritical to not believe in some form of copyright (unless you are advocating for feudalism, where work does not count as value, and the owners of the land or tools worked get the products of the labor by default).

At my US university the school had a (free) text book rental program. I never had to buy any books.

edit: Obviously the initial cost of the books is paid for by tuition, but it's much less than the cost of each student buying their own book.

lucky you. California universities living largely on subsides just moved to Pearson's online homework. Requiring every single student (even the ones taking a extra language class for a single semester) to buy $300+ dollars text books just for the online access code for the lame online homework website.

you simply cannot pass any class without the $300+ ticket from that publisher. Oh yes and the actual books are old and full of misogynistic cultural commentary. The riches generated in this illegal scheme is definitely not going to improve or update the books.

Few student organizations from UCLA tried to fight it, the result was that some graduate students that did not sign the petition won all the TAships next year and that was it.

The autograder homework hack by Pearson is epic. I wonder how many people from ticketmaster and comcast started working at Pearson?

In the math and engineering classes I took, the prof normally just distributed his notes via PDF.

I read this as the "prof had normally distributed notes".

Having been a US citizen for all of my 60 years, and often wondering "why things so fked up?", I've come to understand or believe this about the US:

If it makes money, it's good, regardless of whether it's good or bad for people or the environment. Once something is making money, it becomes a god-given right (cheap labor, insurance companies as health-care middlemen, etc).

If you propose something that inhibits the above, you will be opposed with all available resources by elected members of government at every level. That people are the ones suffering and electing is a mystery that I don't think I have enough remaining years to understand.

Being opposed by elected officials is one thing. What truly baffles me is being opposed by the very people that are adversely affected.

Many policies are literally convincing poor families that it is in their best interests to help support the frail legacy of billionaires. How!?

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs. Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

One of the biggest job creators is the government, with their massive budget and public needs. Yet we are often lead to believe that we need to coddle billionaires so that they feel comfortable enough to lay a few more jobs, and starve the federal government of revenue and responsibility.

Indeed. The government, like poor people, spend every dollar they take in, which allows that money to circulate. To use a cliche, a billionaire can only buy so many yachts, pieces of art or gold bricks; at some point, the excess is going to land in an offshore account or otherwise be underutilized.

Billionaires grudgingly create jobs.

Every dollar given to the billionaire is willingly given because the product benefits the person at least a dollar (net benefit to both parties). "The excess" is invested in other companies that produce other things people are willing to pay for.

Every dollar the government spends was taken from a taxpayer (cost one dollar), to provide a product people are not willing to pay a dollar for. This yields a net loss to society, unless there are positive externalities.

This does not mean that there is not a role for government spending (a "common good" in the economic sense is undervalued in the market).

Voluntary exchange produces an economic surplus, increasing net well-being. Government (compulsory) spending hopes to create an economic surplus, but is largely not measurable.

Sometimes the aim of government spending is simply transfer of wealth, which is zero-sum (or maybe negative sum, if it damages incentives to produce, or maybe positive sum if the recipients can use it to greater net benefit). Again, hard to measure.

>Every dollar the government spends was taken from a taxpayer (cost one dollar), to provide a product people are not willing to pay a dollar for. This yields a net loss to society, unless there are positive externalities.

Except this is not entirely true. Much of modern income is rent, and people are willing to buy things like defense, and much of the "dead weight loss" you are talking about is offset by collective barganing power.

Edit: Like you say, it's complicated and I'll be the first to admit don't understand how it all works but I don't think soaking the rich works well either, in theory or in practice, and government is often unfairly maligned by people who have something to gain by less government involvement.

> Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

Which of course leads to the question: Which job creators are most effective at providing sustainable (and, ideally, scalable) employment for the available talent pool?

They're also created by removing roadblocks for job creators to create jobs. Think about all the people who were locked into jobs because switching or going out on their own would require unaffordable (or perhaps unobtainable) health insurace for themselves or family members with preexisting conditions.

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs.

1) A bit over a third of poor people (in the US) do work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2014/home.htm

2) Reducing poverty can work by either raising the baseline (stronger social safety net, maybe higher minimum wage, better overall vocational education, etc) or by moving individuals into other economic classes (getting people (better) jobs). I think raising the baseline is probably a better approach, since it works by not leaving people behind.

"A bit over a third of poor people (in the US) do work"

This sentence is not wrong but a casual reading of it would nearly always give the wrong impression. Herein "poor people" is defined as the people below the federal poverty limit. For one person this is around 12000 dollars.

A more common sense colloquial definition of poor is those barely scraping by based on the cost of living in their area of residence. In most of those considered poor by that broader definition someone in the household is working. Remember that not all families have both partners working.

Your perhaps too brief post would inspire people to think that most people by the common sense definition of poor are in fact unemployed which is not correct.

They're not called 'job creators'. Jobs don't need creating. They're called self-interested capitalists. They aren't 'creating jobs' out of the goodness of their hearts. They sometimes, to a certain limited extent, require labour in order to maximise their profits.

> Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get jobs.

Poor people are lifted out of poverty when they get the tools necessary to secure and maintain sufficient initial and recurring quantities of material assets; jobs with sufficiently high pay do that (but not all jobs have sufficiently high pay), though they aren't the only thing that could.

> Jobs are created by incentivizing job creators.

No, jobs are created by paying people to do work. There are several ways government can cause this to happen: the simplest and least prone to be misdirected is to simply pay people to do work. Among the more complex, less reliable, and more likely to be manipulated to maximize profits to other people and minimize jobs to the people for whom the goal is to secure jobs is creating financial incentives to capitalists in the hopes that it will result in them creating jobs that lift people out of poverty.

Different jobs have different levels of net benefit to society.

For example, paying someone to "dig a ditch and fill it in" gives that person work, but is a zero-sum game - transferring wealth between people, but not increasing the total pie (total well-being), at least without considering the psychological benefits of work (and exercise!).

Similarly, breaking windows to create jobs for window repairmen creates jobs, but is negative-sum - it benefits window repairmen, but reduces the overall pie. You're better off just giving money directly to window repairmen.

In contrast, some jobs increase the total wealth, and can benefit both the worker and the people willing to pay for the work to be done. (positive sum).

Some positive sum jobs increase the total wealth more or less than others, for the amount of money invested (spend $, increase total wealth .01% or 1%?). Similarly, the net gain of the work may be distributed differently (does the purchaser receive more of the surplus or the provider?)

Focussing purely on jobs ignores the cost - is society better off if I employ 100 people to do the work that 1 person could do?

The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done.

A lot of evidence seems to point towards the best way being a combination of the two.

> The best way we've found to increase total well-being is to allow people to pay for what they want, rather than having government mandate jobs to be done.

The widespread unrest with classical, 19th Century, capitalism and it's displacement throughout the developed world with modern mixed economies is a direct result of the untruth of this claim.

No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car.

If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue.

No one creates a job. They satisfy a demand. Steve Jobs supposedly said something like we didn't know we wanted iPhones until we saw them. That may be true, but lucky for Apple that there are enough people with disposable income to buy those iPhones.

Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands.

The only person who creates a job is the guy buying a pack of cigarettes while filling up his car.

> No. Jobs are created from demand. There will be no cars sold in a neighborhood, and therefore no car dealerships, unless the people there have money to buy a car.

True. But when people want a car, they do not automatically fall from the sky.

> If there are people there to buy a car, or a gallon of milk, then "job creators" will compete against each other to hire enough people to satisfy that demand, and take a cut of the revenue.

And that is how they become rich. People get a car, or a gallon of milk. A few people get jobs selling cars or gallons of milk. Someone gets rich by opening a store or a car delership.

> Demand comes first, then jobs to satisfy the demand. And if a "job creator" could satisfy that demand without creating jobs, he'd do it. "Job creators" are not in the business of creating jobs, they're in the business of making money, however the current economic environment allows and demands.

And when we have all our needs met without people having to work, with machines taking care of all our necessaities, we can think about Universal Basic Income. Until then, enterpreneurs will have to hire people to satisfy demand.

Maybe the people don't agree with you about what's in their best interests. You may believe that getting money for yourself regardless of any other consideration is the "correct" way to vote, others may disagree.

Many policies are literally convincing poor families that it is in their best interests to help support the frail legacy of billionaires. How!?

In the US, poor people don't see themselves as poor. They see themselves as not-yet-rich (or, at least, not-yet-middle-class). Therefore people oppose taxes on "the rich" because they think that those taxes might one-day affect them, even if that expectation is unrealistic in the extreme.

> In the US, poor people don't see themselves as poor. They see themselves as not-yet-rich

This is repeated so much that I'm starting to distrust it...

> If it makes money, it's good

Pretty much the broken window fallacy on a societal level, perpetuated by a system that commonly grants political influence on a per dollar, rather than per capita, basis.

The way I understand it: Making money means a market, market mean consumer choice rather then government mandate, which means freedom.

The fact that there is no actual consumer freedom in many cases like this one never manages to register; the idealism of a free market overrides all the messy practicalities of reality.

The only time we had to use a professor written paperback textbook the quality was abysmal and the layout unusable.

I don't have any data to objectively support the textbook quality, but overall I generally preferred them to standard textbooks. Perhaps how common it is impacts quality.

This has happened to me in a few courses at Queen's University in Canada

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