Has anyone ever taken the time to explain why the apparently scary prospect of people "racing to the bottom" is bad for me as a consumer or member of society?
The original usage was about states competing by offering better terms to corporations. These "better terms" were worse for the people living in the state because they got less tax income and less worker protection. But they are the vendors in that analogy, the customer/corporation was very happy with how things worked out.
Am I really supposed to shed tears over a corporation's business model being a bit more like operating in a free market?
Your point is entirely orthogonal to my point, so I am quite comfortable that following your digression does not undermine my comment in any way.
What I will say about Android handset makers racing each other to the bottom is that what is good for you as a consumer is when entire products compete against each other. The trouble with looking at handsets is that they aren't really whole and complete products. They need an OS/Ecosystem/Theme Park and they need a carrier's service to complete them.
What is best for consumers is when there is competition for all the elements of the stack from top to bottom, either in packages (iOS on iPhone on AT&T vs. Android on Nokia on Sprint) or individually. I don't know how things will play out in the Android "space," but from what I've seen so far, the big nut to crack for consumers is the carriers, not the hardware and not the OS.
When text messages are less than a penny each, I will know that the entire stack is competing in a way that is good for consumers.
From that comment, I'll assume you're not in Europe. We've had the telecoms regulated somewhat sensibly and "racing to the bottom" for a while. And while it's not perfect I will note that during my last foray into purchasing phone contracts it seemed fairly difficult to avoid getting infinite text messages thrown into the deal (though I did manage it since I got a very cheap, effectively data-only plan which is all I needed).
'fraid not. Here in Canada, the Oligopolistic situation seems worse (if that can be imagined) than in the US. It is possible to buy bundles with effectively unlimited text messaging, but overall the situation for Internet and wireless telephony is anything but an efficient, competitive market.
Just to clarify on the texts: The very cheapest monthly (as in a single month long contract) deal I could find came with, by default, infinite texts (and these are cross-network texts, which a quick Google suggests seems to be a restriction on Verizon in the U.S. even when you pay an additional surcharge for texts each month, the price of which alone is higher than my entire monthly bill).
I'm sure you've been able to pay extra for a ridiculous numbers of texts for a good while, but now they seem to have dropped to be very roughly in line with their actual cost, which I believe is indistinguishable from zero to the networks.
The original usage was about states competing by offering better terms to corporations. These "better terms" were worse for the people living in the state because they got less tax income and less worker protection. But they are the vendors in that analogy, the customer/corporation was very happy with how things worked out.
Am I really supposed to shed tears over a corporation's business model being a bit more like operating in a free market?