I didn't say they should mandate a fixed price. I said the book publishers should charge a fair price, one that decreases the amount of pirating because it's low enough so that it's not worth it for students to pirate. That's up to them. Until they do, I fully support pirating of textbooks.
No one put a gun on your head to go to that college. You took this decision and then you must be responsible for the costs of tuition, housing, books... Inform yourself well of the college and professors before enrolling too.
No it isn't, but thanks for the 1970s propaganda flashback. If the government is setting prices that private producers are bound by, then that's some form of socialist/capitalist mixed economy. If it were communism, the means of producing textbooks, diamonds, etc. would be publicly owned in the first place. That is, DeBeers wouldn't even exist unless it were some kind of state appendage.
I wouldn't call that communist, but it's not a free economy either.
Who's the biggest state-run-economy advocate, I wonder?
There is nothing inherent in the definition of corporation saying that corporations are 'more corporatey' when left unrestricted by an external legal system. In fact the only way a corporation (a legal entity) can exist is within a legal framework. That is, corporations can't exist without being regulated into existence.
>Governments dictating prices of textbooks would be a step toward communism
No, if anything it would be shifting the socialism/capitalism balance towards the former. Regulating a market price isn't making a claim on ownership of the means of production, and so has nothing to do with communism.
The US government sets price floors on almost every crop produced in the country. Nobody claims this to be communism or a step towards communism, because it isn't. Price guarantees are a transfer of wealth from non farm-owning taxpayers to farm owners, which is an economic policy rooted in socialism. Price-setting for textbooks or diamonds would also be a policy rooted in socialism.
If your argument is that any socialist policy inevitably leads to communism, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you really think the USG has communism in mind as an end goal?
The solution to piracy is for the publishers to charge fair prices. In other places such as the UK where textbooks are sensibly priced, there is almost no incentive for piracy and people are far more inclined to buy the text from a bookstore than used.
Interesting you bring up DeBeers. I suppose you assert that the global diamond market is healthy as well?
A solution would be to make sure that Colleges have to pay for half of the price of student books, and put it into Tuition. That way when students see the inflated tuition prices (due to lots of $300 books), they go with the other college that has book prices that are reasonable.
It's a nifty switcheroo to charge students tuition, then say "you are responsible for buying the books, and by the way you don't have a choice in the books."