When was it that the manufacturers of new technology hardware realised that most of the civilised world had had brain amputations, that we didn't know the difference between colonic irrigation and having a haircut, and that they could charge us whatever they liked for their products?
Moreover, when did they discover that they could sell essentially the same product to us in a hundred different forms, with minor differences so that all these products, and the equipment they go into, are mutually incompatible?
Take those tiny items, print cartridges, used in faxes and computer printers. In essence, they are little ink-bottles, made of cheap plastic. Their cost of manufacture is negligible, and their retail price should be about the same as a bottle of Quink, which sells at €4. Logically, a printer cartridge should cost not much more; but, needless to say, it very much does. You'll be lucky to get one at 10 times the price of your Quink bottle.
Look, I know Mr and Mrs Hewlitt Packard and Mrs and Mrs Samsung have to send the little Hewlitt Packards and infant Samsungs to school, and take little Wayne Hewlitt Packard and little Kim Samsung on skiing holidays, and pay off their mortgages, and plan for the old age, as well as investing in R & D. But God Almighty, lads, a print cartridge - i.e. a bottle of Quink - costing €50 or more: how stupid do you think we are? They don't think anything of the kind; they know it.
Rules of economics
There is no more gullible, docile, pathetic, uncomplaining, obedient, witless cretin than we poor consumers of new technology hardware. The ordinary rules of economics, of supply and demand, of price-points and consumer resistance, cease to exist when it comes to the cheap throwaway junk that you need to make electronic things work. The mobile phone makers discovered that long ago when they found they could charge almost any price for a frivolous accessory.
Equally, the manufacturers of ink-jet printer cartridges have long ago learnt that new economic rules exist in this crazy place of technophilia, where it is possible to perpetrate any price infamy on the public, and all you get back is the low groan of pleasure of a masochist biting the pillow. Is that price higher enough? No - more, more, aaaaarrgghhhh.
Indeed, it's probably the case that the lower the price for ink cartridges, the greater the consumer indignation. "What do you mean, it's only €12? I paid €55 for it last time. What sort of gouger are you anyway, dropping prices like that? You think I've no self-respect? I demand to be allowed to pay the good old high prices, not these cheap, giveaway prices you're foisting on the public now."
Needless variety
It's not just the astounding Ferrari-ashtray prices of computer bric-a-brac which is an assault on common sense. It is the utterly needless variety of ink-wells available which makes you feel as if you have contracted scrapie. There are several hundred kinds of these virtually identical little plastic pots for identical uses in almost identical machines; but they have minor design differences whose only purpose is to ensure that they are uniquely adapted to one form of printer only.
So there is no technology cross-over. My Samsung printer can use only one kind of cartridge, i.e., inkwell, and no other will do. It is a Lexmark 2968-PR-2ZWa, or something like that. But the relationship between printers and their inkwells is like that between those rare Himalayan orchids which can be fertilised only by an even rarer sub-species of wasp which it fools into trying to mate with it.
So a Lexmark 2968-PR-2ZWb will not merely not fit in your 2968-PR-2ZWa machine, but if you try to put one in, the printer is programmed to inject you with a flesh-eating virus which will promptly devour your private parts.
Naturally, these cartridges are not kept in stock in Ireland (though of course no one tells you that when you buy a machine which uses one). How could they be? You need a warehouse the size of Belgium to stock all the inkwells with perverse design features on them whose sole purpose is to dictate your loyalty to the one manufacturer through the lifetime of your printer. So a special order for my inkwell has to be sent abroad, and when it finally arrives I will probably pay a few hundred euro for the privilege of owning it. Which fills me with an unspeakable joy, needless to say.
Fight to the death
How is this possible? How is it that the combined weight of the US and the EU appear incapable of breaking this inkwell monopoly, and that we are forced to pay the price of a McDonnell Douglas F-15E Eagle for a little tub of black dye? For this is a classic controlled marketplace, with printer manufacturers exploiting their dominant positions. It's time for the governments of the world to take on the inkpot manufacturers of the world - a fight to the death.
Until that day, perhaps we should be looking at alternatives to the cartridge: trained squid, say. Intelligent animals, squids, which can print in any language. What's more, they generate their own ink supply. But do let them out whenever you can - it can be awfully confined in those printers.
Your pet squid will then perch on the mantelpiece, singing sea-shanties and spinning mariner's yarns of love and adventure on the Spanish Main. It'll even knit you an Aran sweater. That's more than your inkjet cartridge would ever do.