[OS X TeX] OT: Was: LaTeX presentations in full screen - avoiding Adobe Reader

[Luci Ellis]

On 19/11/07 5:33 PM, "Alain Schremmer" <schremmer.alain at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> On Nov 19, 2007, at 10:33 AM, Themis Matsoukas wrote:
> 
>> But my question is this: if free markets work, how come that bad
>> software is so widespread *and* costs so much? The productivity and
>> man-hours lost in undoing Acrobat and venting the resulting
>> frustration are unbelievable. Any economists out there...?
> 
> Because, as economists say, "bad money chases good money". But then
> of course, aside from Samuelson, I don't know any economist that got
> rich so, maybe, they don't know really as much as they think.

Well, speaking AS an economist, I agree with that last sentence. But I don't
think it's true that there are few rich economists. The top ones can become
very rich indeed. There are textbook advances
<http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=95662>, speaking fees (Paul
Krugman makes a bomb), and don't forget those Nobel prize-winners who
founded LTCM. They made a packet before they lost it. Keynes made a fortune
on the stock market. And have you seen how much business schools pay their
professors, many of whom are economists?

Now, to the topic at hand: the "bad money drives out good" thing, which is
known as Gresham's Law, isn't really what's going on. I think you are
referring to network externalities, where allegedly inferior products end up
dominating because everyone wants to use the product everyone else uses.
(Windows, Word, etc, spring to mind.)

But there is a corollary, which is "you get what you pay for". We have all
voted with our wallets by choosing OS X over the free Linuxes, even though
they also provide unix capabilities. And it probably explains why installing
fonts and getting TeX to recognise them is such a nightmare.

Best regards,
Luci