"There is no monopoly."
Really, so Apple doesn't control 75% of the mp3 market, even though it admits it does? http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/09/09/ipod_market_share_at_73_8_percent_225_million_ipods_sold_more_games_for_touch_than_psp_nds_apple
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/16/does-apple-have-a-monopoly/
What counts as a monopoly to you? Why was Apple investigated for anti-trust due to its monopolistic control of this business?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-22/apple-s-jobs-must-answer-questions-in-itunes-antitrust-dispute.html
"How many mp3 manufacturers would there be under a communist government?"
How is that relevant? Must every discussion devolve into inquisitions about communism? Monopoly is different under communism, because firms are incentivized by profits to produce. Products are therefore, if anything, severely undervalued in terms of price. Which is why when capitalism was restored prices soared. So your question falls flat, really, if you're trying to turn the tables here.
"Would we even have ebooks under commuinism? After all when a new technology is arrives on the market it is usually very expensive, as the Kindle was initially. As a product gains popularity and more units are manufactured economies of scale come into play and the unit cost drops. Furthermore the competitive market makes the
cost to the consumer fall even further."
Except there is no competitive market with this product, so that really doesn't apply. And I fail to see what this has anything to do with anything we've been talking about. We weren't talking about price. We were talking about how ads are already being filtered into ebooks and how ebook readers are going to facilitate monopoly control over books, and it's going to be harder for your "consumer choice" narrative work once books are monopolized. And your price lowering doesn't always actually occur. It tends to happen with electronic goods but many other markets seem to be suffering from persistent price increases, like healthcare (scanning) equipment.
"But under communism why would the government decide to make what would surely seem too expensive a luxury."
And? I don't see what the punch-line here is. That at least you have mp3s? Is there some kind of moral imperative to have mp3 players? Are people's lives somehow irrevocably changed for the better with this technology that seems to be of inferior quality to records? If your argument is that the market innovates better than authoritatively structured economies, I beg to differ. Most of your best innovations came as a result of military imperatives, like the internet and computer, for example. That had nothing to do with the market. The Soviets outpaced the west, despite inferior resources, in space, military technology and certain aspects of medical technology. There is nothing intrinsically more innovative about markets. In fact, as we've seen with the green businesses, the government in market economies has to heavily subsidize these ventures for them to have any shot at getting off the ground. If the start-up costs are too high, the market is going to do it. Planned economies do not have this difficulty.
" There would be no choice. As far as monopolies are concerned there would be the ultimate monopoly - the government manufacturer."
Which is of a fundamentally different quality than a for-profit monopoly that arbitrarily sets prices to squeeze the most profit out of people, instead of a government monopoly that in many cases operates at a loss, if anything.
You're comparing apples to oranges, and manufacturing a lot of red herrings here while not really addressing the main point.
To Mute or To Unmute Dip33, that is the question!
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