More Windfall Profits…
Yet we don’t hear the “price-gouging”, “greedy-executive” monkeys screaming about Apple’s financial numbers.
Why is that? Could it be that a computer is a trendy luxury item who’s value is more emotionally appealing than the gas we pump into our cars? Where evasive perception and consensus trump the fact that both offer immeasurable value to our lives. Or, could it be simply a symptom of altruism’s decay on our culture - one’s need of a product invoking a sense of entitlement which results in many emotional manifestations voicing that irrational claim. People don’t want, they need gas more than computers.
Interesting to note also that the computer industry is one that is virtually unregulated in comparison to the energy market, which becomes obvious when you consider the rate of innovation and increase in value that freer market has displayed. I mention this in context of the cyclical nature of irrationality it illustrates. Entitlement inspires envy and hatred. The market is demonized, regulated, tweaked - all which drive up the price, which ignites more emotional chaos, which incites more do-gooding regulation. The cycle goes on. If only big-oil could market itself as trendy and hip! On the flip side, with some variance in degree due to more emotionally fulfilling aspects of computers, that industry is doomed to the same dichotomy of an existence subject to interference in direct proportion to the value it adds. I contend that as soon as computers are “needed”, the pioneers of the field will be clubbed just as oil execs.
