Capitalism is beneficial as long as profits aligns with increasing productivity. However capitalism is harmful when profit incentives encourages creating bottlenecks. The appstore is currently a bottleneck and Apple has no incentives to fix it, removing their profit incentive from keeping that bottleneck around is good for everyone. If it really benefits the user to have everything running in the Appstore then it would still keep it there even if it had a 5% fee, just that Apple would no longer try to make everything go via the app store even when it doesn't make sense for it to.
Yes and the way it's supposed to go is that a competitor creates their own devices that entice users away from Apple, just like Apple did with RIM. Why 5%? why not 4? Why not 6? Who are we to decide what Apple charges for Apple services? How do you know what it costs Apple to maintain the review process and to continue to innovate in mobile space? Why is it any of our collective concern what apple over/under charges for?
What do you mean doesn't work? Didn't it produce Apple to begin with? Where was the regulation on RIM in the late aughts?
> just like they did for VISA and Mastercard when they capped card transaction feed.
And in so doing they significantly increased the barrier to entry in the space, effectively cementing VISA and Mastercard into market dominance. This happens everywhere everything is regulated - incumbents shape the regulation so it's easy for them to comply with and difficult for new entrants, creating all sorts of disfunction.
Let me ask, what is the cost of doing nothing here exactly? Why are you so certain that that cost is higher than the cost of intervention?
> And in so doing they significantly increased the barrier to entry in the space, effectively cementing VISA and Mastercard into market dominance
This isn't true, there are tons of alternatives to Visa and Mastercard in Europe today. Rather significantly reducing the profits and thus the warchest of these companies made it easier for small companies to compete, not harder. The same applies to appstores.
> Let me ask, what is the cost of doing nothing here exactly?
The cost is reduced innovation. Same with card fees. The future is electronic payments, they are much more efficient, anything that hampers that is hampering innovation. That includes card fees, or this tax on Appstore purchases. Many apps simply aren't feasible to make with such high fees, marketplace apps etc where you trade things with people for example.
Not to mention that the Appstore tax encourages advertisements over purchasing apps, since you lose 30% of any purchases but you don't pay anything on ads, making the advertisements effectively 40% more profitable in comparison. You'd have a more sane monetization ecosystem for apps if the appstore tax got reduced.
