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If that were more profitable that's how the market would already be?

I guess most people just believe the story about the chips being used to make sure there's enough ink. If they're even aware of the chips.

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I think anyone who has ever tried to get any process optimizations pushed through in a large company, knows that the idea of "the market will automatically do whatever is most profitable" is mostly an ideologically convenient pipedream.

Absolutely. But I think that in the specific case -- if every firm in an entire market is abusing customers -- it implies that the abuse is profitable, and the market success shows consumers are abuse-tolerant. Really it's showing something about the demand side of the market.

To talk about ideological pipedreams the "perfect information" consumer is the other side of it.

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