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Comment by jklein11 | Hacker News Reader

The strategy on printers has largely been, “lose money on their hardware and make it back on the ink.” If you were to go to market against them you would be competing with something that is already losing money. For your average consumer it’s probably not worth buying a machine that is 10x better for 20x the price.

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Yes, your argument corresponds to the Western understanding of a market economy.

But the world has been flooded with incredibly cheap electronics for years - some of them highly subsidized. It is apparently still profitable for this market to solder out components from used devices and reuse them in new devices.

And not just for toys or everyday appliances such as flashlights, but also for medical devices or devices with precision mechanics. I'm just surprised that inkjet printers are the exception here.

Phrasing it as the "Western understanding" of how market economies work suggests there's an alternative, perhaps in your view more correct, understanding of how markets work. Usually we don't use the phrase "Western understanding of gravity", despite it being originally formalized in the West.

Is that your intention here? If so, what would be a more suitable market environment to allow for your production of no-name inkjet printers? :)

Oh sorry, I thought it had become commonplace that the free market economy was more a construct of the "West" (Europe and USA) and that communism and Marxism were the driving forces behind the market in the "East" (Russia, Asia).

Sorry, that was in no way meant to be pejorative. I'm not an economist and for sure not a racist.

> communism and Marxism were the driving forces behind the market in the "East" (Russia, Asia).

Could you provide some examples of technological innovations, created in Asia and driven by communism?

Because, as I know, all modern high tech in Asia are made for free market, driven by will to earn money, or copy-pasted from earlier development from other countries.

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