Edward Miller, 4LS
In Tuesday's Alligator, the editorial board called for an investigation into the pricing practices of textbook publishers and asked for lawmakers to place regulations on textbook pricing and buyback policies. I see where the editorial board is coming from â€" it feels screwed and wants the government to step in.
But something needs to be asked of the editors and all of those who advocate similar government regulation of prices and profits: What right do you, as the consumer, have to the textbooks being sold? Have you, as a consumer, provided any contribution toward the production of the textbook? Have you assembled dozens and dozens of references, figures and graphs, scoured the most recent literature and organized all the information into a neat, logical form easily understood by those new to the field? What exactly gives you, as students, lawmakers or anyone but the producers and authors of the textbook, the right to decide how much is too much for a textbook? And by what right do you have to tell the producers of these textbooks that they do not have the right to decide how much their intellectual labor should be sold for?
The next time the editors decide to advocate government regulation of prices, it would be prudent for them to first ask these questions.
