Verily I say unto thee, that Gordon spake thusly:
> But it's ALWAYS been like that in UK. Doesn't matter what the
> exchange rate, you can bet your bottom £ that MS software in UK is
> the same number of £s as it is $ in USA....
Prices rarely bear much relation to any intrinsic value, they are
"demand" driven (ostensibly). In non-bullshit terms, this means
consumers are charged as much as sellers think they can reasonably get
away with, before we revolt and just stop buying.
The upper limit on "reasonable" tends to disappear for certain things
like cigarettes (addiction forces people to accept unreasonable prices)
and petrol (people need to get to work, so it's not like they get to
choose whether or not they buy fuel).
I do remember reading an actual admission (regarding Windows prices) by
some UK economist (in the Gruniad maybe?) that the Brits are far more
tolerant of high prices (we'll moan about it, but pay anyway) than in
other countries, which is (apparently) the primary reason for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip-Off_Britain
Although that article makes no mention of our supposed tolerance.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which
| the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf
| denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty.
| Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
| the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today
| among human creatures." ~ Abraham Lincoln
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.26.8-57.fc8
23:43:55 up 33 days, 3:42, 5 users, load average: 0.09, 0.06, 0.09
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