Trey and Matt and Politics

they said in the chat tonight they hate conservatives but hate liberals more

Join the Libertarian Party! The best of both parties, rolled up into a lovely little package.

It seems to make the most sense that they're Libertarians. From watching the show over the years, they've shown themselves to be pro-gay (Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride), anti-religious opression (Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?), yet pro-free enterprise (Underpants Gnomes). I guess they've made a shitload of money over the years, and don't want anybody taxing it away from them, or telling them what they can or cannot do with themselves.

I think it was a sarcastic joke

I think so too. The joke was that nobody knows what happens between the collecting and the profits. It's almost like a Dilbert joke only more edgy.

On Fri, 11 May 2001 10:17:28 -0400, Dave wrote:

You guys are missing the point. The nunderpants gnomes themselves were just silly. The radical libertarian point of the episode is that if Starbucks drives a local coffee shop out of business, that's A OK, his coffee probably sucks anyway, and the busybody "concerned citizens" have no right to keep the Starbucks out. Excuse me, "Harbucks". You have to be pretty libertarian to write an episode like that.

George

George Weinberg wrote:

Hey, that's not anything like a Dilbert joke.

You'd have to be a rather radical (and ignorant) libertarian to support that stance. It completely ignores the dangers of monopolization. Just imagine how crappy and expensive Harbucks coffee will become once it drives all of its competitors out of business.

If this is the way Matt and Trey favour doing business, it makes you wonder why they shot Bill Gates in the movie.

they don't get anything from the merchindise

"Bill K." wrote in message news:[email]...

Who said anything about monopolization? A monopoly is an exclusive right to offer a given product/service/whatever in a given area. Harbucks does not have any such power, in the show or in real life. In the show, they became the only coffee shop in town, but that's because the town is too small to support two shops. Even so, they were no more a monopoly at the end than Tweek's was at the beginning.

Needless to say, "Harbucks" is NOT the only coffee shop in town in real life, just the most popular. I have enough old, mediocre coffee shops around in my area to remind me why so many others went out of business when Harbucks came around. Most of them charge about 15 cents less than Harbucks, and sell coffee that is $1 worse. If everyone else wants to keep selling bad coffee until they go out of business, that's their fault, not Harbucks's.

Only if a complete idiot takes over, wakes up one day and thinks "Gee, I'm making way too much money. What can I do to stop that?"

Probably because he is an annoying geek. Maybe because they don't like his product much. Possibly - but probably not - because they buy into that bogus antitrust case (which has never even been seriously alleged against Harbucks). I fail to see a great inconsistency between disliking Windows 98 and liking Starbucks coffee. Even at the same time, I might add; it's not hard to envision someone sitting in front of his computer with a cup of Harbucks, watching his computer crash, cursing Microsoft, then calming himself down with a sip of Harbucks.

Nobody said anything about a legislated monopoly. But cornering the market through an aggressive marketing strategy and obliterating the competition can have the same effect. In this hick, one-coffee-shop town, I could see Harbucks' quality declining, unless head office has a strict policy requiring all of its franchises to deliver all the same products at the same prices with the same quality standards.

A more likely line of thinking to set in is "What can ANYBODY ELSE do to stop that? I'll just jack up the prices and reduce expenses to make even more money, until people start getting fed up and start brewing their own at home." Got to have market competition to keep the company honest and prevent it from getting too complacent and cocky. Thankfully, in real life, Starbucks hasn't managed to blow all its competitors out of the water.

You also have to wonder why so many people curse Microsoft, yet continue to use their products. That is because they have the market covered as the industry standard OS through years of predatory marketing, and many important applications require its use.

Monopolies, granted or acquired, negate all the advantages of a free market society, and do not serve in the best interests of the end consumer. Yet, it seems extreme libertarians are more concerned with the principle of letting them do business any way they want than the good of the consumer and society as a whole.

"Bill K." wrote in message news:[email]...

That's the only kind there is. A large market share is called "success," not "monopoly."

Evidence, please? The cost of setting up a new coffee shop is hardly prohibitive.

declining,

To the point of tasting just as bad as Tweak's, I suppose. But if that happened, South Park would end up in the same position as before, not a worse one (except for the Tweak family, obviously).

Which they do. It doesn't take very many bad Harbucks shops to besmirch the reputation of the entire chain.

I'm

The same thing Harbucks did: start a new chain, one coffee shop at a time.

Blah, blah, blah. I'm no big fan of Microsoft myself, but a lot of people are, and that is why their operating system is the standard. But analogies between OSes and coffee brands don't work very well, anyway. Operating systems (or at least APIs), are a network market which naturally tends toward "monopolies," while coffee is not. My telephone is worthless if no one else has a telephone and I can't talk to anyone. My OS is useless if no one else has it, as no one will write applications for it. But my cup of Harbuck's isn't worth any more or less to me just because someone else drinks a different brand.

That is true of real monopolies, in which no one is allowed to compete, and may be true of some "natural monopolies," in which competition is not really feasible for practical reasons. It is not true of large market share per se. The only reason Harbucks got its large market share is that so many people like their products, adn that is also the only thing that holds them in place now. If that changes, their "monopolistic" market share will plummet just as fast as all those crappy brands that "cornered" the market decades before Harbucks (or Microsoft) existed at all.

On the contrary, "extreme libertarians" understand economics, while most people don't.

You're wrong here.

	Main Entry: mo·nop·o·ly
	Pronunciation: m&-'nä-p(&-)lE
	Function: noun
	Inflected Form(s): plural -lies
	Etymology: Latin monopolium, from Greek monopOlion, from mon- +
	pOlein to sell
	Date: 1534
	1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or
	concerted action
	2 : exclusive possession or control
	3 : a commodity controlled by one party
	4 : one that has a monopoly

In any case, in this "success" story you describe here, the consumer ultimately gets screwed.

It could be, or at least be made very difficult, if Harbucks, with its large financial base and backup, were to strategically undercut any upstart competitors in markets concerned just long enough for the sole purpose of driving them out of business. I hope there are laws against that sort of practice.

It looks like DG disagrees with you on this. Either that, or they're bad throughout the chain. Mind you, I'm not really much of a coffee drinker, so I can't really comment, but the last time I did try one of their coffees, I did find the beans to be overly burned.

And if the market is unregulated, another thought that may enter their minds is "What can we do to stop THEM before they start to make an impact?" (eg. strategically undercut them, buy them up, etc.).

I never said Starbucks' market share is "monopolistic" by any means, except for the fictitious example in the South Park episode. Basically, what my comments were were really in response to the episode's message that things will be best if left to large corporations. Did the townsfolks really get better coffee for the rest of eternity because of this change? Furthermore, I also find that Ma and Pa operations in small towns tend to take more pride in their work, and be more bonded with their communities to serve them better, unlike the minions working at the bottom for a large and impersonal major corporation--a point ignored and even contradicted in the episode.

Oh no, the libertarian philosophy is extremely simplistic at best, though its underlying principle of freedom is quite understandable. Rational and responsible people will look and think beyond the idea of just "letting everything go".

Corporations are in the business for making money, not for being good samaritans serving the public best, and their aim is to keep profits high while keeping costs down. Give them free reign to conglomerate or knock out competition uncontrollably, and you'll end up with inefficiencies, unproductiveness, and uninnovativeness rivalling those of communism. The difference being, without the equal distribution of wealth.

"Bill K." wrote in message news:[email]...

Sez you. But you have yet to provide any evidence that a high market share in a potentially competitive market is any worse than a competitive market per se. As long as the potential for competition exists, the "monopolist" has to keep looking over its shoulder.

Sure there are, they're called antitrust laws. The practice you describe is called "predatory pricing." However, few serious economists believe that predatory pricing would work anyway. Every time a "monopolist" resorts to such a tactic, he loses money, both in terms of absolute dollars and in terms of foregone profits. It takes a long period of sustained monopoly afterward just to recoup those losses. Absent any mechanism (such as a law) to prevent anyone else from competing during that period, the predatory pricer will end up losing big time.

Besides, the notion that anyone should worry about Harbucks *undercharging* anyone, even temporarily, doesn't pass the laugh test.

the

There is hardly a product/chain/etc. anywhere in the world that pleases everyone. Harbucks isn't my favorite brand of coffee, either [Peet's is], but it beats the pants off of most independent coffee shops. And as a coffee junkie who seeks them out, I know whereof I speak.

If South Park were real, yes. In a world where Kenny can die and mysteriously reappear a week later, nothing is permanent. I haven't seen Tweak's (the shop, not the character) or Harbucks since.

And also contradicted by reality. The "baristas" at my local Harbucks might have a more inane name for their jobs, but other than that, they are every bit as friendly and courteous as anyone I've met at a local Ma and Pa shop. And let's face it, not all Ma and Pa shops are all that "bonded" with their communities, either. Many have horrendous service that makes it immediately obvious to the casual visitor why Harbucks has a huge, successful chain and they don't.

Nice try, but there is nothing rational or responsible about trying to micromanage that which one does not understand. Nearly all economists understand this point, and most of them are not libertarians by any stretch of the imagination.

Well, duh.

Try taking away their ability to compete aggressively (or, if you prefer, "knock out competition uncontrollably), and you'll end up with a bunch of cushy cartels, the very "trusts" our antitrust laws were originally meant to eradicate. Your suggestion that corporations should "play nice" is neither realistic nor, from a consumer's perspective, desirable.

You talk of unequal distribution of wealth as though it were a bad thing. More to the point, though, the real difference between the inefficiencies of socialism and the supposed ineffeciencies of unbridled capitalism is that the former exists in the real world, while the latter exists only in your head.

That is, if the predatory pricer doesn't scare away all potential future competitors by making an example of its victim.

Maybe my view on this differs from yours, because I actually find independent retailers' coffees to be better (as said before, not overburned). But I would imagine that being known in a small town as the purveyors of bad overpriced coffee would get you on bad terms with the rest of the townsfolks. If there are too many such bad businesses in town, it'll have a ripple effect, bringing down overall pride and morale among the townspeople, and the end result being a dump of a town in which everyone dislikes and distrusts each other.

I didn't say anything favouring "playing nice" and forming cartels either. Sorry I forgot to include collusion in the naughty list with conglomeration and predatory practices in the above list, which practically has the same effect. In any case, this further underlines the need for antitrust laws, as opposed to the libertarian free-for-all.

It certainly would be if the wealthy were to acquired it through selling bad products at high prices.

I think the reason we don't see many examples of the latter may just be because there haven't been many cases of it in recent history, thanks to the fact that every country has antitrust laws, but the Microsoft example comes pretty damn close. (How else do you explain paying hundreds of dollars for something that crashes so much, by your own admission?)

"Bill K." wrote in message news:[email]...

law)

Fortunately for everyone else involved, not all potential future competitors are that dumb.

prefer,

of

meant to

neither

Actually, you did. Your whole beef with Harbucks, Microsloth, etc. is based on your allegations that they compete too vigorously.

Sorry I forgot to include collusion in the naughty list with

That's an odd theory, seeing as it is exactly the opposite act. Collusion doesn't drive competitors out of business; it boosts everyone's profits since no one has to price their goods competitively anymore. Great for your competitors, bad for consumers. Cutthroat competition, by contrast, drives prices down to the point that it becomes difficult to turn a profit at all. Great for consumers, bad for the competitors, and not necessarily all that good for the company doing it (who perceives it as a necessity to gain market share, not as a good in itself).

In any case, it shows how poorly thought out and irrational our antitrust laws are. If your prices are too close to your competitor, you must be "colluding." If they more than a few pennies higher, you are "gouging." If they are lower, you must be trying to "corner the market." In that scenario, simply being in business is almost a crime by definition.

inefficiencies of

that

your

Every country doesn't have antitrust laws to speak of. The U.S. has rather extreme ones, and Germany has essentially copied them in the last couple of decades. Most other Western European countries have not.

Operating systems are a "network economy," so it was a matter of time until someone ended up with a "monopoly" in that arena. Unfortunately for us power-users, free enterprise is very "democratic," and the average "voter" (user) likes dancing paper clips more than they care about improved functionality. In any event, it's not as though the government has a better solution.

I think right now, everybody is too scared to come up against the Microsoft giant. BeOS tried, with predictable failure. The only way around it now is through free alternatives like Linux, though the profit potential for its distributors is nowhere near as high for obvious reasons.

Actually, I would have a beef against them if they were to knock out all competition. There's a fine line here between being competitive and being anticompetitive.

Actually, I was alluding to the fact that what we end up with is a *virtual* monopoly. Same detriment to the consumers.

I guess some things are difficult, and even almost impossible, to determine and prove. All it takes is one secret phone call or conference, with the executives agreeing on price, quantity, etc., and you have all the makings for collusion, which I suspect happens all the time in the real world.

In any case, I'm glad to see you're not a fanatical *total* libertarian, which I was under the impression you were, and your beef is with some of the finer points of existing antitrust laws, and not the fact that there are laws governing the market, period. If you were a total libertarian, you'd be saying "All regulations are bad! Corporations should be free to make any deals with anybody they choose."

Really (corruption notwithstanding)? It makes one wonder how they manage to keep a manageable economy. At least, you'd think every (at least democratically elected) government in the world would implement such laws to satisfy the public, even if they aren't entirely enforced in practice.

I would add that we are at a critical junction concerning the future of something so important as computers and telecommunications technology, and companies like M$, especially considering it reputation, need to be dealt with extremely cautiously, by both governments and the market. I'd hate to see the future of the technological world fall into Bill Gates' hands, just because the current generation was too mesmerized by talking paper clips, etc.

"Bill K." wrote in message news:[email]...

But you're still stuck with that "network" aspect of OSes in general. We're all better off with a "monopoly" on OSes, at least when it comes to the APIs. Not so with coffee, or 99.99% of other products.

based

Colluding is anticompetitive. Competing too vigorously is not. Condemning one or the other is logically defensible, albeit misguided IMO. Condemning both makes no sense. [An obvious exception being the Mob's kind of "competition, involving busted kneecaps, and worse. But that involves conduct which would be illegal in any context, without regard to its pro/anti-competitive effects.]

But one has the risk of remaining intact, while the other does not. If all "competitors" agree to boost their profits by not really competing, they can all start making money the minute they start. Eventually someone will cheat, or a new party will join the fray, and it will be all over, but at least they will have made big $ in the meantime. By contrast, when one party tries to kill off the competition by competing too well, price wars result, everyone in the industry loses money, and consumers make out like bandits, at least in the short run. In the long run, of course, the game of compeititive "chicken" ends. If the predator "wins" (and there's no guarantee that he will) he'll ends up with a "monopoly" that is bound to be short-lived, as there is no shortage of venture capitalists waiting to jump into the market as soon as it becomes profitable. That's why "predatory" pricing almost never works, and consumers win big every time a businessman is dumb enough to try it.

Actually, I *do* think corporations should be free to make any deals with anybody they choose, provided those deals don't involve activities that would properly be characterized as criminal in their own right. The one exception, which predates the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and its progeny, was the common law tradition of refusing to enforce contractual agreements which unreasonably restrain competition. As long as everyone who colludes is free to cheat, the collusive agreements won't hold up anyway.

Corruption has nothing to do with it. According to my international law professor [at UC Berkeley's anything-but-libertarian law school], most Europeans have the same "ho-hum" attitude toward private monopolies [note the absence of quotes in this instance] as they do toward private sector free enterprise in general. There, the attitude is "you can have competition, or you can have a monopoly. Either or, no big whoop."

I just wish an independent consortium could develop the standards for cross-compatibility that the tech community would accept, so that the choice of environment to run the apps in will be more open to the user. Mind you, opening us to this sort of flexibility is something that M$ has been working against by bundling more key apps into its operating system. The tech community should also come to accept "free" alternatives (eg. Linux) to provide the standard platform for API's instead of proprietary ones, whenever available, especially those more robust and dependable. The problems with Linux thus far are that it is lacking ease of use, tech support, and compatibility issues (both software and hardware), though the rapid development of the various desktop environments and drivers for the Linux OS, and the WINE project, should take care of most of these problems, and hopefully eliminate the need for Windows for most purposes, even for running apps specifically developed for Windows.

This reminds me of the price wars that take place between gas stations in this area periodically. In any given region, the price of gas remains (almost) the same between the competing retail outlets. However, every now and then, a gas station decides that it wants to draw attention to itself and attract new customers by lowering its price drastically. Neighbouring stations soon follow suit to compete, causing a ripple effect of lowered gas prices throughout the whole region, with the gas stations incurring a loss, while motorists go into a frenzy filling up their tanks while the gas is cheap. The station managers/owners soon realize what is in their best interests, and soon, prices go back up to normal levels. As for whether collusion is involved, let's just say it's as easy as making a few phone calls.

So the lesson learned from the above example is, if there is collusion between supposedly competing businesses, there may be occasional breaks in the collusive arrangements, but such breaks will likely be short-lived. If the cartel can meet and organize regularly, they'll respect each other and play by the rules for the most part, knowing full-well that they either thrive together or sink together.

As for an example you're looking for, I remember a couple of years back, the supermarket workers went on strike. There was one supermarket chain that hired mostly part-time workers, so it was not affected. Though normally noted for selling cheaper than its competitors with full timers, during the strike, its prices shot up big time due to a lack of competition. Thankfully, this situation was only temporary.

To return to the South Park episode, it's worth noting that it was never even sugested that Harbucks would engage in predatory pricing or anything like that. The busybododies' sole argument against Harbucks was "we don't like big corporations, we like little Mom and Pop operations."

What Matt and Trey appeared to be saying is 1) This obnoxious "citizens group" has no right to use the law to inflict their preferences on the general public and 2) It's grossly immoral to try to win sympathy for their cause by putting their words into the mouths of children who really have no idea what the issues are.

Personally, I consider this to be incredibly corageous in today's PC world (yes it is). Having an elephant fuck a pig is just silly. Casting a big corporation as the hero is the type of thing that could get them hit by a boycott from people that actually might otherwise watch the show.

George

I worked for a "mom-n-pop" store in the '80s that was thrown out of business by a big conglomerate in the '90s. Details:

This was a small stationey, greeting card and business products store. Around 1985 it took the lease on a 2nd store in the same complex and separated the two branches accordingly. In 1986 it was able to take the lease on the store next to the 2nd store, so it movedthe first store into store #3 and knocked out part of the separating wall. Things looked really good. Business was booming.

Then a Hallmark's moved in within the same city block. Basically they underpriced their stock to drive the small business out of business. Then when the small business closed they upped their prices to "the usual." This also coincided with a fundamental change in the way smaller businesses kept written records, so much of the older business form market dried up. So the small business was hit on two fronts. It could have handled a single front, either one, but not both.

Also, Hallmark's has a demonstrable field record in driving small businesses out of business, then lowering the quality of their own product. Same with Wal-Mart and other chains.

I know a small store-front computer goods store can't compete with Sears or Circuit City, but those are big-ticket items. They can't possibly offer the stock and diversity of a large chain. Similarly, Tweek's wa just shitty coffee, and the only one in town untilt he Harbucks moved in with a huge selection and good prices.

We're gradually being force to deal exclusively with chains and nothing else.

<<We're gradually being force to deal exclusively with chains and nothing else.>>

I think that America will one day be populated by nothing but Rite Aid, Duane Reade and Cosmetic Plus stores. Very sad, indeed.

What, no Wal-Mart?

LiamD

See my other post regarding the mom-n-pop stationery/card/business store. Hallmark's does this regularly. Undercut then raise prices.

The impression I got from Starbucks -- and I won't even try to aproach the bags of beans sold in the market for ridiculous prices ($7 a bag???? -- what is up with that??? -- maybe I'll try it, but the coffee I buy for even $3.50 to $4 a bag is really good stuff!) -- is that the "regular" coffee is the shit left over from everything, including wha is less that ideal, and that's priced "normal-like," and the good stuff is way overpriced.

Now a the local university (the one where I got my degrees, where I occasionally speak and where my wife has workedd for 20+ years), there is a great little coffee stand. The stuff they brew is really, really good, even the "regular" brew. They also have a discounted quadruple iced espresso called an "Adios Motherfucker" which is discounted because there are only about a half-dozen people on any given day who will brave it (I'm one of them! -- so you may guess that good coffee to me isa sticking point).

It's not hard to make a good cup of coffee, but if you fuck up on any stage -- roasting, grinding, boiling, brewing -- you get a cup o' crap. Coffee-making is still a from of ART. Chains are not conducive to making good art unless they hire good artists. Even when you hire a guy who can only rule cartoon cel borders, he better do that well or your cartoon is going to look crappy.

"Bill K." wrote in message news:[email]...

That's possible, but even that theory doesn't work quite right. Most libertarians want to legalize all drugs. That hippie with a shirt reading "legalize everything" suggests that T&M do NOT share that view, and would prefer to make fun of it. Then again, they make fun of everything under the sun, so maybe it doesn't mean that much after all.

Does it seem chilly in here to you?

LiamD

Libertarian: someone who believes that the best government for Gilligan's Island scales well to several hundred million people.

--Tim Smith