Comment by Booktrope | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Booktrope | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

He calls it "The Conscience of a Liberal" and then says "So yes, I’ve been wrong. Let those who are without error cast the first stone." Krugman is a good example of what's gone amiss with liberalism.

Even worse than his many errors, is his hypocrisy. He very loudly accused Amazon of being a "monopsony" during Amazon's most recent dust-up with the big publishers, on grounds that its market power would enable it to hurt consumers, although he acknowledged, Amazon hadn't used its economic power that way. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amaz...

The impetus for Krugman's column was, Amazon's resistance to big publishers using their market power to overprice ebooks. Krugman was on the side of the big publishers for obvious reasons I think. Krugman's own widely-assigned economics texts provide some of the clearest examples of big publishers using monopsony to overprice ebooks. His publisher, presumably with Krugman's support, sells ebooks of these texts for $100 - $200 a copy. A great example of mmonopsony - because students are assigned Krugman's books and therefore don't have choice, Krugman's publisher extracts monopsony profits. This isn't just a little convenient opportunism -- as Krugman surely knows, overinflated textbook prices are a significant burden on many students, who are leaving university with huge debt. Yet, Krugman goes along with this exploitation, and presumably banks very large royalties for himself at student's expense.

I say presumably a couple of times, because I've not seen anything from Krugman explaining or apologizing for the prices of his own books and the way this exploits students.

> Krugman is a good example of what's gone amiss with liberalism.

The entire left side of the aisle? But, not any other people? Hmmm.

> He very loudly accused Amazon of being a "monopsony" during Amazon's most recent dust-up with the big publishers, on grounds that its market power would enable it to hurt consumers, although he acknowledged, Amazon hadn't used its economic power that way.

Well, they are a giant player with immense power that already dictates things to its supply chain...

And the important thing to do is recognize risks before the problems manifest. It wouldn't be any good to tell you your garage was full of flammable rags after your house burned down.

> Yet, Krugman goes along with this exploitation, and presumably banks very large royalties for himself at student's expense.

Compared to wages, speaking fees, etc? I doubt it.

But nonetheless, you do have a good point about textbooks being exorbitantly priced. When we provide student-loans, schools increase tuition. If we gave children a billion dollars a year universities would still be pretending to be broke and asking for more.

IMHO, that's the racket we need to break. As long as there's a government license to print a "right to work" token (a degree), you'll have players entrench around it - like camping spawn spots. And as always, the less effective the school is at teaching the more resources they have for political battles.

You are confusing monopsony and monopoly. Monopsony is often a government buyer, say of prisons or aircraft carriers, and the monospony puts the buyer in a stronger position. In a monopoly, the power is with the seller.

Amazon may have been acting in the consumer's interest in the fight about textbook pricing, but it's hard to argue they weren't using their monopsony. The publishers were also not cooperating – they were simply setting prices higher than people would like.

I'm also no big fan of these conspiracies where someone like Krugman does something because it may mean a few thousand $ per year for him. That's a cheap attack, and it really doesn't seem plausible that he'd care more about a bit of money than winning the argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com