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From: dww@stl.UUCP (David Wright)
Newsgroups: net.audio,net.micro
Subject: Re: CD-ROMs
Message-ID: <242@stl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 15:00:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: stl.242
Posted: Mon Oct  7 15:00:23 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Oct-85 05:45:46 EDT
References: <512@moncol.UUCP> <997@druxo.UUCP> <1067@hou2h.UUCP>
Reply-To: dww@stl.UUCP (David Wright)
Organization: STL,Harlow,UK.
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Xref: linus net.audio:5453 net.micro:11051

In article <1067@hou2h.UUCP> mr@hou2h.UUCP (M.RINDSBERG) writes:
>The reason for the difference is that the manufactures are trying to
>recoup their initial R&D investment at this point in time. 

Not quite, it's the manufacturing setup cost which is biggest.  There's a 
1/10/100 rule here - ratio of Research/Product development/manufacturing cost.
So quite likely for a novel but potentially high sales volume product like
CD disks costs are going to be say $1M initial research, $10M development to
point of practical (manufacturable) prototypes, $100M to build a high volume
factory - all this for each company concerned.   Say a company wants to get
it's investment back in the first million copies sold: they'd have to make
$111 "profit" on each disk, which would lead to  a selling price (if materials 
cost $1) of say 3x $112.  Fortunately the manufacturers of CD disks expect
a multi-million market so the startup cost loading is much less than this
per disk.

But there's no way round paying for the startup costs in a Capitalist
society.  In a Communist one, of course, such trivia as CD disks don't
get developed at all.  And in a Mixed/cooperative/or similar society,
they only get developed "free" (i.e. at taxpayer's expense) if the
government thinks people really need them, otherwise it's left to the
Capitalists, as above.

TANSTAAFL  ("Tain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch").