Re: An Open Letter to the IAHC

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

Christopher Ambler writes:
> >You know, that probably explains why there are no supermarkets or
> >other food stores anymore. With the ability for just anyone at all to
> >start a supermarket at any time selling identical products no one
> >could make money, so everyone worldwide stopped selling food.
> 
> That's not a good analogy, Perry, as supermarkets act as sellers of
> branded goods.

Its a fine analogy. Using your logic, the prices at all the
supermarkets would go down low enough that only the makers of the
products they sell would make money -- the supermarkets would make no
money themselves. And yet, they make money. All supermarkets sell
pretty much the same goods, you see, and yet supermarkets
advertise -- not the goods, but the market itself! Amazing, isn't it.

If you don't like this, take a commodity good or service. Take, say,
wheat. There is no brand name on wheat. Wheat is wheat. Wheat is
traded on commodity markets. And yet, people make money buying and
selling wheat, even though I can go to any one of literally hundreds
of sources -- even though lots of wheat are traded on futures markets
as being completely anonymous bags o' commodity. No one "owns" wheat,
no one promotes it. Somehow, though, people make money -- often a lot.

You can take Dave Crocker's mention of the fact that many publishers
print volumes of literature long out of copyright -- any time you've
cracked open a copy of "Hamlet" or "Pride and Prejudice" you've seen
one of their products. Mysterious, isn't it, how people can be induced
to produce books on which anyone else on earth could print a nearly
identical book without having to pay a royalty to anyone. Raw
competitive forces should eliminate all profit altogether, shouldn't
they? Somehow, though, these publishers continue to exist, and even
make a profit.

So, your argument is that if thirty companies can all register in
.FOO, there will be no money to be made registering anyone in any of
the domains because it's a commodity business, right?

For answers to these and other mysterious questions, take a course in
microeconomics. A hint, though, is Yogi Berra's old comment about the
restaurant that was so crowded that no one ever went there any more.


Perry