Tag: David Pogue

Categories
free trade & free markets

Good Pogue, Bad Pogue

Reviewer David Pogue knows technology but often botches business ethics. Writing about T‑Mobile’s decision to liberalize its cellular contact, he asserts that “the two-​year contract” to which T‑Mobile is offering an alternative “is an anti-​competitive, anti-​innovation greed machine.” He gets his dander up:

The Great Cellphone Subsidy Con is indefensible no matter how you slice it — why should you keep paying the carrier for the price of a phone you’ve fully repaid? … Those practices should stomp right across your outrage threshold.

Maybe outrage is called for … by Pogue’s demand for outrage. It’s outrageous.

Companies need not compete on every level, to every aspect of a service, in order to offer customers a real alternative. And no particular voluntary market arrangement is inherently “anticompetitive,” for it cannot in itself prevent anybody from offering costumers something different. (Only government force, a major factor not discussed by Pogue, can block competitors from competing in particular ways.) Nothing about multi-​year cell contracts prevented Tracfone and others from offering prepaid plans. Or prevented T‑Mobile from offering its new plan.

Or a different alternate.

Pogue’s accusations of greedy “anti-​competitiveness” can be and are made with equal injustice against any successful business. But there is no set amount of revenue greater than a company’s costs beyond which profits suddenly change colors, from moral to immoral.

And nothing is wrong with pursuit of profit per se, just as there is nothing wrong with pursuing an expected benefit by purchasing products and services, popular or un-.

People expect gains when they trade. If they see no benefit, they can just say no.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people

Pogue Privacy “Paranoia”

Apple customers recently learned that the cellular versions of their iPhones and iPads are storing detailed tracking information about users in an unencrypted format.

Ace New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue belittles anyone concerned about the threat to privacy. He himself has “nothing to hide,” lacks the “paranoid gene.” In conclusion, “So what?”

Chiming in online, reader “Diana” avers that “Privacy is dead. It is time to get over it” — a familiar yet incoherent sentiment which assumes that privacy is an all-​or-​nothing commodity.

If there were a spate of break-​ins in a neighborhood, would anyone feel justified in blithely asserting, “Security is dead. It is time to get over it”? Would you be making a pointless fetish of security by continuing to lock your front door or improving the lock? Should everyone suffering under dictatorship be instructed that their freedom is dead, get over it?

The costs of breaching privacy can be minor or great. With respect to unencrypted and archived tracking data, the practical costs of the vulnerability may be zero until the wrong person with the wrong motive exploits it. The danger may be a lot greater in other countries.

It’s appropriate to debate how great an apparent threat to privacy may be, and the best way of countering that threat. But it is wrong to assume that institutionally persistent but unnecessary assaults on personal privacy are either irreversible or silly even to notice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.