This holiday season consumers armed with smartphones are using the internet in their palm to find the best deals, keeping retailers on their toes, and presumably driving prices down.
The rise of smart phones, with their go-anywhere Web access, is changing the shopping game this holiday season.
Tech-savvy shoppers are finding it easier than ever to work the system to get the best deals.
They’re scanning barcodes with their cell phone cameras to load into price comparison Internet sites while standing in store aisles, using GPS to find discounts at nearby stores and flashing electronic coupons straight from their phones.
This is how a free market works.
Now, imagine of you will, a time when health care consumers, free to choose from multiple providers of insurance and care, armed with reviews and cost comparisons via the internet and driven by the same motivation to get more for less.
…if only the government would get out of their way, reform indeed we would have.
And then, at long last, everyone who can afford smartphones will be able to get great insurance.
Just out of curiosity: based on your definition of socialism, exactly how long has America been a socialist state?
I tried that trick, bar code scanning, at Best Buy. Was asked to leave, and not nicely either. They won’t even let you take notes with pencil and paper.
Don’t shop at Best Buy. Of course Obama/Reid/Pelosi could pass a law requiring you to shop there (just to extend the analogy).
The analogy is stretchy, but not as stretchy as you’d hope.
The “Digital Divide” is one of those other lower-priority injustices that has tech-wonky liberals exercised. Expect a “Public Internet Option” in an Obama second or third term.
Depends on your definition of a socialist state, Apathy Boy. Even the socialists don’t agree on that.
My definition of socialism is an economy in which the government owns and controls a majority share of the state’s production of goods and materials.
AB,
You’re close. Change it to “the government owns or controls”. You can use corporations to implement a command economy just as surely as you can via government. Hitler’s Germany was no less socialistic in concept than Sweden; it was implemented through tight control of industry rather than actual ownership.
I think that’s the essential difference between National Socialism and Fascism on the one hand and Communism/Socialism on the other. Fascists and Nazis don’t care who owns the means of production as long as they do what the State says, while Communists and Socialists insist that the State has to own the means of production.
I think, wombat-socho, your description of the difference between national socialism and Marxism leaves out something important. In national socialism the State was seen as an eternal and legitimate expression of the collective will of the people. In fascism the omnipotent state was seen as an expression of human nature. In communism this was not so.
At least in theory.