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Comment by maeon3 | Hacker News Reader

So your solution is for them to charge fair prices? While we are fixing prices, I suggest we also fix the prices of DeBeers diamonds to appropriate market value. Then why stop there? Lets have the government set the prices of all overpriced commodities, including outrageous salaries. Someone's already beat you to this idea though, it's called communism.

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There is no "market" for textbooks. Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it. If a class could somehow allow for different textbooks would allow students to pay for cheaper textbooks and create price competition. But it's hard to do in practice if not impossible.

I didn't say they should mandate a fixed price. I said the book publishers should charge a fair price, one that decreases the amount of pirating because it's low enough so that it's not worth it for students to pirate. That's up to them. Until they do, I fully support pirating of textbooks.

Professors assign a single textbook, and students are forced to buy it.

No one put a gun on your head to go to that college. You took this decision and then you must be responsible for the costs of tuition, housing, books... Inform yourself well of the college and professors before enrolling too.

I also fully agree with pirating textbooks. I'm still at university and require books every now and then. Just the other night I needed access to a book that hasn't been published as an e-book and was $105/£65 if I even had enough time to get it from Amazon. So I downloaded it from a popular torrent site.

>it's called communism

No it isn't, but thanks for the 1970s propaganda flashback. If the government is setting prices that private producers are bound by, then that's some form of socialist/capitalist mixed economy. If it were communism, the means of producing textbooks, diamonds, etc. would be publicly owned in the first place. That is, DeBeers wouldn't even exist unless it were some kind of state appendage.

It's funny, because intellectual "property" is actually the opposite of real property: a state-mandated monopoly, long ago useful because it only was for a few years (and it only mattered to publishers who owned presses), but now a hindrance after decades of lobbying for extensions.

I wouldn't call that communist, but it's not a free economy either.

Who's the biggest state-run-economy advocate, I wonder?

the government ability to set prices for another corporation makes it a little bit less like a corporation, and a little bit more like a government run "Ministry of diamonds" agency. Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism. After they set they diamond prices, then next up on the agenda is to set employee salaries at fair prices.

>the government ability to set prices for another corporation makes it a little bit less like a corporation, and a little bit more like a government run

There is nothing inherent in the definition of corporation saying that corporations are 'more corporatey' when left unrestricted by an external legal system. In fact the only way a corporation (a legal entity) can exist is within a legal framework. That is, corporations can't exist without being regulated into existence.

>Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism

No, if anything it would be shifting the socialism/capitalism balance towards the former. Regulating a market price isn't making a claim on ownership of the means of production, and so has nothing to do with communism.

The US government sets price floors on almost every crop produced in the country. Nobody claims this to be communism or a step towards communism, because it isn't. Price guarantees are a transfer of wealth from non farm-owning taxpayers to farm owners, which is an economic policy rooted in socialism. Price-setting for textbooks or diamonds would also be a policy rooted in socialism.

If your argument is that any socialist policy inevitably leads to communism, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you really think the USG has communism in mind as an end goal?

Good grief, get over yourself. There are not communists lurking under every rock trying to grab your ankles, FFS.

The solution to piracy is for the publishers to charge fair prices. In other places such as the UK where textbooks are sensibly priced, there is almost no incentive for piracy and people are far more inclined to buy the text from a bookstore than used.

But he never mentioned government intervention. He suggested that students vote with their wallets, and since they can't decide to purchase another textbook (as one would do in a typical market, which the textbook market isn't), the solution is to pirate.

The problem is that the market has been compromised such that fair price discovery isn't happening.

Interesting you bring up DeBeers. I suppose you assert that the global diamond market is healthy as well?

Textbooks and Diamonds are in the same boat. Free Market supply and demand has been subverted in favour of entities controlling the entire market and setting the prices where the consumers are powerless to punish waste and corruption by selecting an alternative book.

A solution would be to make sure that Colleges have to pay for half of the price of student books, and put it into Tuition. That way when students see the inflated tuition prices (due to lots of $300 books), they go with the other college that has book prices that are reasonable.

It's a nifty switcheroo to charge students tuition, then say "you are responsible for buying the books, and by the way you don't have a choice in the books."

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