Reason Magazine - Topics > Consumer Issues
- Wilhelm Reich: 50 Years in Hell and/or Heaven
Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich had his books burned by the U.S. government in the 1950s and died in prison 50 years ago, in prison basically for refusing to agree with the FDA that his work and devices had no medical value. The Boston Globenotes the opening of his personal paper archives at Harvard, and a possible trend in revival of interest in and furthering of his research.
The Wilhelm Reich Museum.
A devotee's history, with links.
A skeptic's analysis of Reich, with links.
The FBI on Reich.
Robert Anton Wilson's harrowing and wonderful play, Wilhelm Reich in Hell.
I operated a cloudbuster once. I cannot authoritatively state whether it had any effect on the weather.
- MoveOn.Org Lets Sen. Susan Collins be Sen. Susan Collins
MoveOn.org does the right thing. It had been using a dubious Google policy that allows owners of trademarks to ban use of their trademarked name in ads to quash ads from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Collins had been dropping the hated-by-conservatives MoveOn's name as a hook to rally supporters. MoveOn has decided to let Collins say what she wants in her ads. Read all about it at Wired.com. - The DEA's Regard for Safety
DEA Administrator Karen Tandy had this to say upon announcing the recent arrests of mom-and-pop steroid manufacturers in the U.S.:
Today, we reveal the truth behind the underground steroid market: dangerous drugs cooked all too often in filthy conditions with no regard to safety, giving Americans who purchase them the ultimate raw deal.
Nearly a century after the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act, the DEA reveals that the quality of black market drugs is unreliable. Since it's the government that creates and maintains the black market by preventing people who want steroids from obtaining them legally, who is it again who gives no regard to safety?
The New York Timesstory about the steroid busts, which were part of a two-year, multi-agency, international investigation that fingered Chinese manufacturers for supplying the chemicals needed to make the steroids, included this strange interjection:
The drug case comes at a time when the quality of imports to the United States from China has become an issue between the two countries. Tens of thousands of toys made in China have been recalled in recent weeks on suspicion of having unacceptably high level of lead in paint and other hazards for small children. Some Chinese-made toothpaste was found to contain a chemical usually used in automotive antifreeze and not intended for human consumption.
Never mind that Mattel says many of the toys were recalled because of design flaws, not shoddy manufacturing. The Times offers no reason to believe there was anything wrong with the imported chemicals used to make the illegal steroids. Is it obligatory now to mention the toy recalls anytime a story deals with something made in China? As you'll see if you check out the labels on 10 randomly selected objects in your home or office, that rule will cover a lot of ground.
- When Bad PR Happens to Good Economics
Remember the halcyon days of summer 2007, when people camped outside Apple stores in order to be the first one on their block with the iPhone? It was a simpler time, when USA Today offered videos on iPhone "buying strategies," and people like Evan Herman, 28, were scouting out stores for the best crowd, saying "half the fun is the experience of the line."
Alas, as actual apples ripen on the trees and autumn descends, those days are gone. Last week, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone by $200, to $399. The early adopters who had been enjoying the frisson of exclusivity (and perhaps the attentions of the opposite sex) every time they pulled their iPhones from their pockets were suddenly aghast: "I just felt so used as a consumer. They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran."
Initially, Apple stood firm, offering consumers a shrug and the cold comfort of "that's technology." But CEO Steve Jobs soon caved and offered $100 vouchers to earlier purchasers, though his statement wasn't terribly apologetic. There's "always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff dates and misses the new price of the new operating system or the new whatever," he said.
"This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon." He could have been even more succinct. "This is life" would have done just fine.
Apple was trafficking in very basic economics. The practice of offering different sets of buyers different prices is called price discrimination, and all the cool kids are doing it. And some, like Apple, have taken a lot of flack for it.
The classic example of price discrimination gone awry is the great Coke vending machine scandal of a few years back. Some pointy-head at HQ had the idea the price of a can of Coke from a vending machine should fluctuate with the temperature. Thermometer-equipped vending machines would allow the company to charge more for an icy Coke on a hot day at the beach, and less when the weather was cool and pleasant.
The outrage of the Coke-drinking public knew no bounds, and neither did Pepsi's glee. Coca-Cola was forced to deny that it ever seriously considered the proposal.
Meanwhile, how did all these infuriated soda guzzlers with an overdeveloped sense of justice get to those hot beaches in the first place? They bought tickets from airline companies setting their pricing using exactly the same model.
So what's the difference? Why do people cheerfully accept price discrimination when it comes to airline tickets, and become Internet activists when faced with the same phenomenon in vending machines and iPhones?
To say that someone was discriminating was once a compliment. It meant he was a man of taste, the sort of person who could see fine gradations in value and parse the good from the bad.
In later years, discrimination became a dirty word-inverted from it its original sense to mean someone who separated people into unfair and irrelevant categories and the treated some of them badly for no good reason at all.
Maybe that's why the idea of "price discrimination" is so alarming in this day and age. Perhaps those early iPhone purchasers feel themselves discriminated against-trapped by a form of latter day technological Jim Crow.
A few people are probably just acting in a rationally self-interested way: If you could whine a little and get a 100 dollars back on, say, your TV or a ridiculous designer handbag, you'd do it, right?
But most of the people who were whining seemed to feel genuinely wronged: "I feel totally screwed," they say. "My love affair with Apple is officially over." Unlike airline tickets, Cokes and iPhones are easily perceived as identical products, even under different demand situations. And as long as you're not clear on how the underlying economics works, it's easy to feel like you took a bath.
Econoblogger and author of Discover Your Inner EconomistTyler Cowen ranted (in a post sent from his iPhone) about whiny early adopters:
Who has pushed me over the edge? It is you people, y