A light bulb in Livermore, CA has been working for 107 years.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I've said several times that we are just talking about

You aren't being intellectually honest here.

I'm proposing that the existence of non-incandescent bulbs can explain why making inc. bulbs of worse quality can possibly be profitable and you reply that you are just talking about inc. bulbs hence your earlier point that they cannot be profitable cannot be proved wrong by bringing in the existence of other types of bulbs...

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yes... until you remember that ordinary consumers almost never buy other types anyway*, so there's no potential for discrimination.

Not only is this false as the desired result of discrimination would be that ordinary consumers would buy differently than "nonordinary" ones, hence this might show that discrimination is present and effective but you raised another objection yourself:

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
to prevent businesses (and other similarly large organizations) from buying incandescents instead of flourescents.

Originally posted by Kuciwalker The problem there is that IIRC there are pretty sound technical reasons why they'd always want flourescents anyway, even if you substatially improved incandescents.

Possibly. I don't want to get involved into a technical discussion. Though I hope you'll agree that if it comes down to "pretty sound technical reasons" which are presumably complicated enough that you chose not to explicit them yet, then the comment :

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Think about that for 30 seconds and get back to us, mkay?

was unwarranted?


To be honest Kuci, I don't really care about lightbulbs or their economics.


What I wanted to say was the following: I'm not much older than you and I also have an education that makes it very tempting to treat people in certain ways. I see it in myself and try to avoid it. I seldom post but I've been lurking a while and I noticed that you are quickly becoming much worse in this regards and could maybe reflect on this.

That is all.

[Krill]

Kuci is the next KH if he gets class, Asher if he doesn't...

[Heraclitus]

I think Lul is right.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


Snoopy claimed that lightbulbs manufactures made lightbults less durable on purpose.

Kuci claimed that this cannot be the case, using a general argument.

My argument and examples refuted Kuci's general argument, showing that, sometimes, it IS profitable for manufacturers to make their products worse on purpose.

It is always more profitable to do so. The only thing that prevents manufacturers of every product to make it so that you need to buy a new one once a week is competition.

If I could have you all pay for my posts I would do it, but the problem is the competition is too stiff and I have to post for free.

Competition is easy when barriers to entry are low, and in the incandescent light bulb business they are as low as they get. This was the reason for a previous cartel's demise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel).

If it was indeed easy to make incandescents that last longer at virtually no aditional cost (as Snoopy claimed) the Croatian factory I mentioned in a previous post would have attempted it prior to going bankrupt, especially as they had no CFL business to protect.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Krill
Kuci is the next KH if he gets class, Asher if he doesn't...

Join the dark side...

Does KH have class? I hope not.

[Aeson]

Krill equates getting pissed and posting with class I think.

[VetLegion]

By the way, price discrimination is usually when you sell the same product at different prices to different groups. In the case of incandescents and CFLs they are different products with different production costs and the difference in their prices isn't price discrimination.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Competition is easy when barriers to entry are low, and in the incandescent light bulb business they are as low as they get.

Originally posted by VetLegion
That's simply not profitable if you aren't big enough to achieve the economies of scale required to keep the prices low.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Krill
Kuci is the next KH if he gets class, Asher if he doesn't...

Wrong. He is the next PH.


(I wonder who will feel more offended by that comment?)

[Kuciwalker]

I'll have a response to LT later.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by LordShiva

I'd say entry into a business is not the same thing as staying profitable in it.

[LordShiva]

That's not a useful definition of "barriers to entry," though

[BeBMan]

Didn't read the threadi, but my theory is that the evil industry overlords already have access to inventions to produce indestructable things, but don't want to release them for profit reasons, since then we only had to buy stuff once in a lifetime

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by VetLegion


I'd say entry into a business is not the same thing as staying profitable in it.

You wouldn't enter into business if you never think you will make a profit, unless you are a money launderer or something. The barrier isn't lack of profitability, it's what is causing that lack of profitability for your business.

[Krill]

Originally posted by Aeson
Krill equates getting pissed and posting with class I think.

I sure do