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Subject: "Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
942 posts
Feb-14-18, 06:47 PM (EDT)
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40. "RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County"
In response to message #39
 
   I actually know a few guys who have tried to model this in real life.

According to them, in anything even remotely resembling our current economy, what would happen is that "printing" companies would rapidly and quickly get out of the business of producing and selling ink, much in the same way that publishing companies have basically 100% outsourced the actual ink-and-page production of books. (Almost no publisher today actually owns presses.)

The price of ink cartridges would drop extremely rapidly, and they'd become commodified, in the same way that printer paper is, with almost no brand loyalty except for a few specialist companies making special inks for special purposes. However, they'd also become creatively tamper-proof unless accompanying regulations prohibiting making said cartridges non-refillable were also implemented.

In the latter case, there'd be a market segment; you'd have very cheap disposable inkjet printer carts for those that don't give a shit or are lazy, and you'd have much more expensive, but cheap to refill, printer carts for those who care to go to that effort. Think "normal batteries and rechargable ones," kind of.

The price of the printers themselves would rise somewhat-to-significantly to offset the fact that the companies designing and producing them would no longer have ink as a profit center. A number of said companies would likely seek to be acquired by larger conglomerates in order to achieve financial security and stability, and would massively shed staff as they became much more specialized, focused entities. There'd be a refocusing on enterprise-level solutions, where you CAN lock people into your ecosystem and then milk them as a profit center, unless regulations made that impossible as well.

Economists are weird, but assuming they're not Chicago School nutjobs they can be pretty interesting when they talk about minutiae like this.

-Merc
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 Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County [View All] Gryphonadmin Apr-07-10 TOP
   RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Offsides Apr-07-10 1
      RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Verbena Apr-07-10 2
          RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County A Vile Gangster Apr-07-10 5
          RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Offsides Apr-07-10 7
   RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Gryphonadmin Apr-20-17 35
      RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County drakensis Apr-21-17 36
          RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Mephronmoderator Apr-21-17 37
      RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County BLUE Apr-21-17 38
   RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Gryphonadmin Feb-13-18 39
     RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Mercutio Feb-14-18 40
          RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Pasha Feb-15-18 41
      RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County McFortner Feb-15-18 42
          RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Verbena Feb-15-18 43
          RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Gryphonadmin Feb-15-18 44
              RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County McFortner Feb-16-18 45
                  RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County Gryphonadmin Feb-16-18 46
              RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County MuninsFire Feb-16-18 47
              RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County ebony14 Feb-16-18 48
              RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County McFortner Feb-16-18 49
              RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County rwpikul Feb-16-18 50
                  RE: Things You Didn't Know About Avalon County McFortner Feb-17-18 51


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