Re: OT: In Praise of Dos-Based Word Processors

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

At 15/05/2014 13:50, you wrote:

> Has there been any
> (non-electronic) good in human history whose cost has dropped a
> million-fold? Maybe aluminum.


Tulips, although the history is murky, according to one of Wikipedia's
less bad articles. Mackay has two separate citations showing 2500 florins
for a single tulip bulb around 1635. The purchasing power of such a
florin is said to have been appx 10 Euros as valued in 2002. So: 1 tulip
for 25,000 euros. It would be inconvenient but not at all impossible to
buy tulips at the rate of 40 per Euro today, so there's your million.


There must be hundreds (at least) of other examples throughout human
history, though the vaguaries of ancient economics make it difficult to
compare.


In 2008, at a country auction, I witnessed the sale of approximately 300
new ultra-high-quality percale sheets that had originally sold for over
£1,000 each. The entire lot went for £80. My ex-wife, upon whom I then
doted, stayed my avaricious hand, and I cannot say I ever entirely
forgave her.


David Austin has valued his 'Juliet' rose at several million. (It's not
worth it, experto crede). That is just marketing fluff, but certainly in
the orchid world, a newly-bred phalenopsis could sell for a huge amount
of money; it could then be propogated in the hundreds of thousands or
millions, and sold for pennies to growers in Asia (though it might cost
$10 by the time it reaches your supermarket). Orchids that are easy to
mass-propogate are an excellent example of a commodity where the first,
unique, example, is worth a vast amount of money, compared to what might
be charged within a year or so for subsequent identical replicants.


There must be countless other plant and food items that cost fortunes
before they were cultivated widely and cheaply.


Many luxurys car that cost 50,000 when new can be bought for 500 ten to
fifteen years later (in actual working order).


Of course you will have read of the Faberge easter egg that some fellow
in the midwest bought for a couple of thousand and sold for many
millions. Admitted, that was a rise in price, but when he bought it,
there had been a substantial drop.


Apols for acute example of off-topic blathering!


(Cannot resist asking: would manuscripts by contemporary authors which
have sold for millions and then flopped, count? A recent example would be
the Knox memoir.)