market segmentation

["James J. O'Donnell" <provost@georgetown.edu>]

In his long and interesting post on aspects of the pricing and 
sale of textbooks in the international market, Jean-Claude Guedon 
concludes:

> But all this is beside the point. I am not trying to defend 
> Canadian customs and their rules. I was writing about the 
> general principle of market segmentation and its perverse 
> consequences.
>
>Jean-Claude Guedon

The general and vulgar capitalist principle to which he objects 
may best be expressed as, "From each according to his abilities, 
to each according to his needs."

If textbooks are to be produced in complex and elaborate ways, 
the better to facilitate learning, then the bills will be paid 
somewhere. Subsidy beforehand or pricing after offer the 
available sources.  If publishers are to be required (by whom? 
that's an interesting question of international law) to sell 
their property at the same price in all countries, then Americans 
will indeed get a bargain and others will see their prices rise. 
There is certainly room here for an International Textbook 
Authority that would track currency fluctuations closely to 
ensure that disparity did not creep in and Americans get the 
bargains to which the Declaration of Independence entitles them.

Of course, if that principle were followed, then I suppose 
McDonald's would be required to sell its Big Mac for the same 
price in all countries.  If that were even *possible*, then the 
Economist newspaper would not be able to run its regular Big Mac 
Index, evaluating the relative over- and undervaluing of 
currencies by tracking divergent Mac prices.  The International 
Junk Food Authority could handle that one.

I should add that as a vulgar provost whose University press 
produces and sells the most widely-used textbook of introductory 
Arabic in the Anglophone world, thereby making it possible to 
publish other things that don't sell so well, I have been 
impressed precisely by the pedagogical value that the elaboration 
of textbook production has brought.  I asked to see a copy of 
this wonderful 'book' when I first came here and found instead in 
my office a box full of texts, workbooks, readers, DVD's, verb 
charts, and the like.  As a dinosaur who taught himself French 
with a $3 book entirely devoid of any of those things, I can be 
sniffy, but of course, my French is pathetic. A biology 
"textbook" now comes with the equivalent of an old tinker-toy set 
with which students construct three-dimensional models of the 
molecules they are learning about.  Of course economics textbooks 
change every two years, a shocking outrage considering that all 
the main problems in economics have been solved and textbooks 
clearly have no need of revision or updating in a tranquil and 
prosperous world.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown University