Incentives matter and monopolies are terrible
Monopoly (or near monopoly) is always very bad for consumers. Check out this article from OSnews.com about Intel's compiler that goes to some lengths to handicap non-Intel processors. I got more and more thankful for the free software folks (think GNU compiler) and all open source contributors as I was reading this. Yes, I am writing this on an iMac that has an Intel processor. I wish I could fight monopolies effectively on my own...
Academic textbooks and healthcare incentives compared – Boing Boing
The always interesting Boing Boing blog has a long post on the market for academic textbooks and makes explicit comparisons of the incentives in this market and in the U.S. healthcare system. I won't quote from the article, as it is good enough for me to recommend you to read it in whole, along with the comments, several of which are good also. I will say that I am making some progress in this area, having for the first time given students several weeks' notice about the textbooks I am going to use in the upcoming spring semester. Next year, I will try to substitute some creative commons sources for textbooks, but it will be hard, and very hard for my graduate courses.