Such things do exist. An early application was to power pacemakers. A automaker (can't remember if it was Ford or GM) even built a prototype. IIRC it uses thermal power from the decaying atoms.

And even those are not earning much money.

In a interview a few years ago with Ani DiFranco, the report was gushing on how much higher her margins, as a independent artist, than The Dave Mathew Band. Which made DiFranco laugh because The Dave Mathew Band was making so much more money. DiFranco pointed out that going independent was about freedom of control not about the money.

It is not about margins it is about market structure. Piracy has trained consumers that music should be cheap.

If we use a broad defention of "elements of communist china's government" you get 1/3. 60% of the stock is firmly in the public market.

oh, it gets worse than this. After MSFT fire everybody their headcount will still be higher than it was last year.

AMZN has lots of people in the warehouses. Redhat is more focused. FaceBook is more focused and has outsourced (depending on you define outsourcing) a lot of its processes. Etc. all are lousy companions.

No, I am not making that assumption. You are right the opponents seek to exploit their opponent's weaknesses, and just because one has a relative strength in one area does not mean you have an absolute advantage. I just think that in this area we have a large potential weakness that would be hard to shore up against China.

Asymmetric warfare. The US has more space assets and is more heavily dependent on them. If space warfare ever occurred the US would be hurt relatively more. And I have a hard time of thing of any decent countermeasures.

But it is headquartered in America, has factories in America, and is run like a real independent stock company. Not giving it a complete pass but let us try to put things in perspective.

No, but that misses the point. Apple wanted into the book market. The publishers wanted to break Amazon's hold on the market so they could jack the prices up. Thus the collusion began. Apple was a knowing participant in this collusion – that was their price of entry into the online book market.

I will point out that it was the publishers, not Amazon, which set the wholesale prices. When Amazon lowered its retail price below the wholesale price Amazon had to eat that loss. Which leads us too.

When customers get a better deal. Let's strike the illegal part. In America monopolies are illegal if they hurt the customer. There is nothing illegal in running a business with zero to no profits to grab market share, which is what Amazon was doing. If they were screwing around with their competitors or their customers - whole different story. (Needless to say this get subtle and complicated fast, dealing which market structure, etc.)

On fines verses damages – o.k. you got me there. Technically it is damages.

But it also goes to illustrate my point. I poked around a little, and while I could not find the exact language but it seems to fall squarely in the realm of opinion and satire. From a factual sense it was more correct than my post with the error on "fines".

Should we live in a society where we must always mind our Ps and Qs? A society where we need to consult lawyers constantly? At best we reduce conversation from a vibrant free flow of ideas into the lowest common denominator of bland and inoffensive language and ideas.

Question – how would a lending library work without DRM? Subscribe for one month, download a thousand books, cancel, and keep the books? Anything better than the honor system? (Note, this is only a limited argument for DRM in context of lending or a all you can eat streaming buffet.)

She can't, I would argue. Would you post your comment if you had to pay a 2,500 euros fine? Would this not chill what you would write? Would you not censor you opinion a little, if not a lot? Or do you have 2,500 euros to toss around like water?

It is not about opportunity costs, it is about economic surplus.

Consumer surplus is trimmed because consumers now have to pay more - either directly or indirectly.

Supplier surplus is increased as they shift their profits up.

In theory this could might increase total surplus or even total consumer surplus. With increased profits suppliers would supply more shows. Look at the shows that Netflix and Amazon are putting out. Would these shows have been made with these exclusive deals?

Which is why Hulu paid a premium for the exclusive.

It is not retailers that take returns per se.

What the OP is saying is that many novice people will wander by the display, think it is cool, and buy it on an impulse. They will then take it home, struggle with it, figure out it is not as cool as they though, and return it.

Think of all those IBM PC jr and Colecovision collecting dust that people bought in the 80s thinking this would be the thing to solve all of their issue. Now, I know a good subset that put these things to good use or used them as a springboard but many where purchased with only vague ideas on how they would be used.

You are missing the point. The reason why this was news was that the baby had disappeared and stopped taking the drugs.
1. Baby has HIV, is given massive amount of drugs.
2. Baby disappears for 18 months, stops taking drugs.
3. Baby reappears after 18 months, we can't find HIV in the baby.
Ergo the early treatment with drugs cured the baby. Or that is what we thought. HIV is very good at hiding in odd parts of the body and popping out when nobody is looking.