Quote:
Originally Posted by Renato1
Basically, one person or company gets the monopoly for the country, in the same way as someone may get the monopoly to the selling rights for a US State. But in the US state, if the prices are too high, one can easily go get the item in another state - so that limits how high the price can go. But in Australia, we can't go across to the countries next door that inexpensively.
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The monopoly of the 'official importers per state / country' is a bad thing anyway. I hope vendors like Amazon / Aliexpress can break that, although these vendors also bring lots of Chinese crap to us. OTOH, local retailer chains like 'The Reject Shop' also bring lots of Chinese crap, its name is correct, most stuff is to be rejected.
But the bold print above also applies to the EU, even the EU states are formally different counties. I live in Holland, but ordering from Germany or another EU state is easy. No customs, etc.
But is this not in Australia by state ? E.g. bypass higher prices of a certain product in NSW by ordering the item in QLD ?
But prices of electronics (incl astronomy equipment) have fallen strongly in the past decades.
As a child I was dreaming and enjoying the nice color photos of deep sky objects made by professional telescopes in books, now I can make the same photos myself.
The same with telescopes. I dreamt about 'Polarex / Unitron' branded telescopes in the early 1970s costing thousands of dollars, a 10cm costed A$10000 or more, but my A$1000 11cm ED telescope now is lighter, compacter and performs better than the $10000+ Polarex.