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Comment by kbutler | Hacker News Reader

In related news, the US Interstate Highway system will now require a 30% cut of the purchase price of every vehicle purchased in the United States. "Our philosophy is simple—when US Highways bring a new driver to the car company, US Highways earn a 30 percent share."

The US Postal Service considered a similar regulation, but found that customers would simply divert shipments to competitors UPS, DHL, and Fedex, and is instead filing suit against those companies for unfair trade practices, and lobbying congress for a retroactive grant of a business method patent on package delivery with corresponding extension of patent duration to life of the organization plus 70 years.

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Apples and Oranges, my friend. The highway and the USPS are funded by tax dollars. The App Store is a culmination of Steve Jobs and co busting their collective asses for decades on their own time without any mandatory help from you. Now they're going to charge you an arm and a leg for the privilege of using it. If you don't like it, you're free to take a stand with your dollars and go elsewhere.

Using Apple products is not mandatory, of course...but the real question is whether a 30% cut is a fair number or the methodology itself is fair to being with?

Oh, that's why I didn't have to pay for my iPhone, then.

You're precisely correct, You did not have to pay for your iPhone. You chose to.

Yes, I chose to pay for the phone. Apple chose to sell the phone at a price they felt adequate compensation for their "decades" of work.

Apple is currently seeking to leverage their monopoly[1] on the iOS platform by extracting additional rent[2] from content providers.

Their probability of success directly correlates with their pricing power.

Is this rent-seeking good for Apple customers? Unlikely. Is it legal? Depends on how the FTC views Apple's pricing power.

[1]In economics, a monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly)

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent

In the private sector, it’s not uncommon for the party that controls a distribution channel to extract rent from both ends.

For example: I know a guy who worked for a startup that made a new kind of low-fat mayonnaise. They had trouble getting their mayo into grocery stores, because the grocery chains charge fees (something in the five figures, IIRC) for giving new products shelf space, and the company didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay those fees.

η http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slotting_fee

Gas Tax?

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