450. Price Fixing & Dodd-Frank Costs

Ever wonder why all the gas stations in the area come out with the same price plus or minus a penny? Well, don't expect the answer here. Instead look at something so important that the Justice Department had no time to delve into the gas-fixing price problem: e-book pricing! Wow, that's a big impact. But, with the percentage of people buying e-books went up, the people in the Justice Department who had their feet up for years must have seen a price increase and could no longer find a cheaper price for their e-book, on-the-job reading time. What does fascinate me though is why some e-books cost MORE than the lowest paperback! Let me think on this: get a digitized copy of the book from the editor who has to already have it in this form to publish a paperback, and put it's link on the web-buying screen to fetch it if asked. Hmmm. No additional work other than that, except for additional screens to jazz it up with intros, picture-hype, etc. I say, stuff the e-books then. All I need is to click on a link to get it at the lowest price. If I need research, I just go to Amazon and read the comments. Anyway, back to price fixing. I went to a comparison site and looked e-books (epub type at this site) for Septhen King. If you look at the details, there is a large range of prices for all books. So, what's up with the Justice Department? In other words, somebody led the effort to negotiate electronic, digitized discounts/fees, like it was done with the music composers re downloaded music, and others followed suit. Copycats do not make them collaborators in price fixing! Aren't there more important issues for the Justice Department, like Solyndra and the other government ripoffs totalling over $1B? they are grabbing at straws and COSTING us taxpayer dollars for their army of lawyers to rape private industries. Talk about TORT REFORMs being necessary. The government needs only look under its own nose. They spend MILLIONS of dollars (OUR money) pursuing things that cost private companies (again, at our cost since those costs are passed along). Here's something you may have missed: Remember the Dodd-Frank bill that imposed all kinds of regulations on the banking and financial industry? Well, $1.3B has already been spend (they get that last dollar from your wallet?) and they aren't even 1/3 through! Now, add the costs to the companies that get passed through to you and the OBlunder spending train will have rolled over you to the tune of over $5-10B by the time it gets completely implemented. This should have been a different blog, but I couldn't resist tossing in more OBlunder blunders!