Gale of Creative Destruction Wings Tony Snow

I had lunch a while back with a guy who manages hotels and motels in trouble—receiverships, or bankruptcies, or whatever. I was picking his brains on a hobbyhorse of mine: the indisputable fact that the actual cost of “turning the room” is peanuts, and that if the motel is otherwise empty, you ought to be able to get the room for peanuts-plus-one. Isn’t it true, I pressed, that everybody discounts?

Sure, he said, everybody discounts. Well, he added, the fancy places used to say that they would never discount because they had to protect the brand.

But, he added … everybody discounts. And then, after a pause, almost in a whisper:

“It’s the internet!”

Sure it’s the internet. We get our prices on line, we bid and bargain. Not just in hotels but in so many places, the internet has dramatically shifted the informational advantage towards buyers/consumers, which means we get stuff better and cheaper.

The purveyors fight back, of course: I fully expect the clerk at the supermarket to tell me to put the sixpack back, because my profile tells her I won’t like that brand of beer. And don’t get me started on that annoying little gnome. But on the whole, I bet the informational advantage is still on our side.

I thought of this just now when I read this matched set of stories (link, link) about the late love-in at the National Press Club between the President’s Press Secretary and the Pooh-bahs of the press.

Part I is the mostly an unvarnished series of direct quotes from the festival of mutual congratulation and self-pity (plus a video link and, as of this writing, 274 comments). Takeaway point: these guys all agree that bloggers are pestilent little sacs of pus. Part II is Glenn Greenwald’s inimitable smackdown. Greenwald, for his part, doesn’t use harsh words (okay, he uses a few harsh words); rather, the bulk of it is just chapter-and-verse, a series of direct quotes to match Then with Now. It’s a lot like watching Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall.

This is great in itself, but I want to put it in a larger context: these mugs are like a bunch of hotel-keepers, complaining they can no longer get top dollar for their rooms. Gales of creative destruction, baby, you gotta love it.