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Comment by ammanley | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the situation with AOL dialup, which I was surprised as heck to learn is a) still a thing and b) charges way more than I would have expected in areas where its otherwise not feasible to get high speed internet (easily). Could be similar to the situation here with people who can't leave/won't leave for personal or career reasons, and taking up the prices available.

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I think "captive market" is the term you want. Same reason cable TV bills keep climbing to +$200/month, and newspaper delivery prices keep going up while the product keeps shrinking.

Demand for some things is elastic only down to a point. That's the point where customers are hostages.

Thank you, appreciate that, was looking to put a word to the term in my brainpan.

Newspaper prices are more of a death spiral than a captive market.

People stop getting papers delivered in favor of online news, so prices have to go up to cover fixed costs, pushing more people to stop getting papers delivered and so on.

Interesting. What's the difference?

I notice, walking around the 'hood, that some people still get the San Jose Mercury-News delivered. Why?

I think they just have to get a morning paper, and if it's getting shittier by the year, well, so be it. You're right, lots of readers have already cancelled, but there's a core of readers who won't. The Merc can raise the price and they'll just pay it.

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