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

[Lul Thyme]

Here's a specific example:
the IBM series E Laser Printer in the late 90s contained a chip that was there only to slow down printing to be able to compete with HP's low end printers while still being able to charge a premium for the rest of their printers (mostly aimed at businesses).

Some more examples :

Student versions of mathematical software that disable calls to the math coprocessor in order
to slow down calculations.
The 486SX chip, which is simply a 486DX chip with the coprocessor disabled.
Federal Express offers both morning and afternoon delivery. It appears that FedEx does not
deliver afternoon packages in the morning, even if they arrive in time for morning delivery.
Instead they will make two trips to the same location.

(http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~...info-goods.pdf)


Also note:

The fact that producers will find it advantageous to degrade the product in order to differentiate
prices has been recognized for centuries. Witness the observation of a 18th centurey economist:

It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof
over the third-class carriages or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or
other has open carriages with wooden benches : : :What the company is trying to do is to
prevent the passengers who can pay the second class fare from traveling third class; it hits
the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich : : : And it is again for the
same reason tha the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers
and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class passengers.
Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous. (Dupuit
(1849), quoted in Ekelund (1970))

Pretty much every argument you've made so far was very general and concluded that situations like the above can't happen. These situations are not even rare.

Again, I have no idea whether this is happening with light bulbs and frankly, I don't really care.





That's slightly unrelated but I also notice you have become increasingly rude in a lot of your discussions. Whatever people like KH might let you believe, this is not a good thing. As everyone, I am also guilty of this from time to time of course but I think it's a good think to keep in mind and work on.

You might be able to come up with some strong arguments yet but the case you have at this point is very weak and certainly didn't warrant your dismissive attitude at the beginning of the thread. Does any point warrant such?

[MarkG]

i'm not sure if there is another forum that i would be able to find a discussion on the efficiency of lightbulbs as well as one on the economics of modern mass production on the same thread

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Brand is actually pretty important for certain types of lightbulbs (CFLi's, CDM, etc.), but not, admittedly, for incandescents. Still, there's a fair bit of strategic behaviour among teh manufacturers, and teh market is far from being perfectly competitive.

One thing is for sure: barriers to entry don't exist. A light bulb factory went bankrupt in Croatia a couple of years ago. It used to buld the common incandescent light bulb. That's simply not profitable if you aren't big enough to achieve the economies of scale required to keep the prices low.

[VetLegion]

Lul Thyme, how does price discrimination relate to this discussion? You keep posting examples of it but I can't see how it either supports or refutes any of the arguments made.

[Krill]

I thought that halogen bulbs give better runnign costs as they are more efficient than regular light bulbs?

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Lul Thyme, how does price discrimination relate to this discussion? You keep posting examples of it but I can't see how it either supports or refutes any of the arguments made.

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.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Krill
I thought that halogen bulbs give better runnign costs as they are more efficient than regular light bulbs?

tend to start more dorm fires, though.

[Kuciwalker]

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.

I specifically said that it wasn't impossible.

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

My general argument assumed that we were talking about lightbulb-like commodities. You've assumed a lot of lightbulb-unlike properties in yours. In particular, all of your examples involve goods where there is a low-quality version and a high-quality version, and the artificial drop in quality is used to achieve market segmentation. Now, as long as we're talking about ordinary consumers here, and incandescent lightbulbs, I don't believe that's the case.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

My general argument assumed that we were talking about lightbulb-like commodities. You've assumed a lot of lightbulb-unlike properties in yours. In particular, all of your examples involve goods where there is a low-quality version and a high-quality version, and the artificial drop in quality is used to achieve market segmentation. Now, as long as we're talking about ordinary consumers here, and incandescent lightbulbs, I don't believe that's the case.

Actually it seems to fit the case perfectly.

The discussion was about light bulbs of varying life expectancy.

How is this not a difference in quality that could be used for price discrimination, for example?

[Kuciwalker]

Because, as far as I know, the longer-lasting lightbulbs aren't for sale.

In fact, the original assertion was the lightbulb manufacturers refuse to make them so that we all have to keep replacing lightbulbs.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Because, as far as I know, the longer-lasting lightbulbs aren't for sale.

I don't know much about lightbulbs but aren't some of the non-incandescent types being promoted as being longer lived than incandescent?

In that case, keeping incandescent bulbs at lower quality (with respect to this property) and price would help achieve price discrimination. It would be a textbook example even.

[Lul Thyme]

I'd also like to note that all these objections you are NOW making are to points I made much earlier (in my first batch of posts in fact). Your weaker initial objections seem to indicate that you didn't have as good an explanation against Snoopy's hypothesis that your dismissive attitude seemed to suggest.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme
I don't know much about lightbulbs but aren't some of the non-incandescent types being promoted as being longer lived than incandescent?

I've said several times that we are just talking about

Wouldn't that mean that keeping inc. bulbs at lower quality and price would help achieve price discrimination?

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

The only possible reason, then would be to prevent businesses (and other similarly large organizations) from buying incandescents instead of flourescents. 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.

*CFLs are relatively new still. They can't explain a market situation that existed before they did.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme
I'd also like to note that all these objections you are NOW making are to points I made much earlier (in my first batch of posts in fact). Your weaker initial objections seem to indicate that you didn't have as good an explanation against Snoopy's hypothesis that your dismissive attitude seemed to suggest.

I was talking about incandescent lightbulbs bought by ordinary consumers, and all of my arguments have been explaining why your counterexamples don't fit.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


I was talking about incandescent lightbulbs bought by ordinary consumers, and all of my arguments have been explaining why your counterexamples don't fit.

What have you explained?

Your first post said that brand recognition wasn't present. This is irrelevant as some thought or examples show. I don't even know why you brought it up.

The second claimed that the light bulbs had no difference in quality while the discussion was SPECIFICALLY about a difference in quality...

Your last "explanation" said that higher quality are not in sales. See my last post, incadescent vs non-incadescent explaining why this is also not true.




Also, why restrict to "ordinary consumers"?
You seem to be missing the whole point of price discrimination one of which is to discover who the "ordinary" consumers are in the first place!

If all the ordinary consumers don't care but the non-ordinary ones do and buy something else, that's price discrimination!

See the example I gave earlier where the printer that "ordinary customers" bought was deliberately sabotaged by IBM.