One thing that actually is useful about Econ 101 - or at least 102 - is learning about concepts like "price discrimination" Because people keep on talking about how they want price discrimination without knowing what it is, and without realizing it doesn't happen by magic
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The paperback is like half the price of the hardcover, and it's not because the hardcover is actually that much more expensive to make (far from it), it's because the paperback came out later for the people who wanted it less
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When they release a movie in theaters barely any of your ticket price goes to the actual upkeep of the theater itself (they rely on concessions for that these days), it's just a way to get people who care enough about the movie to go to a theater to see it to pay more
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The thing is, this mostly seems moral to me, given that we're talking about an entertainment product nobody needs to live Marvel superfans SHOULD pay three times as much to see a Marvel movie as casual fans, if they care about it three times as much (at least)
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In a perfect world we'd have perfect price discrimination Some super rich nerd who wants to give $50k to Disney to make more Marvel movies should And ideally, everyone who never was going to pay any money to see it but would still kind of like to should eventually get to
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But the problem is, we can't There's a lot of assholes out there, and a lot of people who when asked "How much can you AFFORD to pay" have their own self-serving definition of "afford"
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People always try to plead this case as though price discrimination already exists "Do you want to tell some poor kid who has no money they can never watch your movie?" Of course not, but how do I make it free for them without making it free for Scumbag Steve
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"Do you want to put the kid on a waiting list to borrow the ebook to *punish* them for not having money" No, but I can't tell whether they're borrowing the book because they CAN'T pay or they DON'T WANT to pay The waiting list is just the easiest way to filter out the latter
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A lot of the anti-copyright people are very insistent that the only ethical way to perform price discrimination is bottom up Make the product free, or make it ONE EVERYDAY LOW PRICE for everyone Then put out the begging bowl and ask for tips and donations from rich people
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I'm not saying this never works People do live off of tips and donations I'm telling you, though, that tips and donations aren't a very GOOD living, because, while this may surprise you, rich people are often very cheap
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If they weren't, we wouldn't need to have taxes, would we We'd give healthcare to everyone for free and then ask people of means to donate to support the hospitals A lot of libertarians and ancaps point to volunteer orgs and charities as what should replace governments
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The problem, of course, is that these people are wrong, and charities generally suck at doing the work of governments If "Pay people what you can afford so they can afford to live instead of being an asshole" were a general thing that worked we wouldn't have rich people at all
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And it's a really perilous thing, bottom-up price discrimination People don't like thinking about how the sausage gets made They're selfish, yes, but what's more than selfish is people are SHORT-SIGHTED After a thing exists, no one wants to think about the work it took to make
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That's the Marxist shit about "alienation of labor" and "commodity fetishism" "Well the file exists, it's right there on the server, it doesn't COST you anything to let me download"
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When you give things away "for free" you make it seem like they didn't cost any of your labor or time to make, you create the impression they just appear by magic Price anchoring is a powerful effect, it shapes people's thoughts more than they realize
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And we live in an era where a whole lot of people are just willfully stupid, they just see "content" appearing as if by magic in their feed every moment of every day, and prefer not to think about the conditions under which it was created It naturally creates a vicious cycle
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I dunno man If the Internet worked as it was advertised in the heady Free Culture days there wouldn't be anything to be pissed off about Nobody would be trying to hire artists "for exposure", nobody would be paradoxically both Internet famous and real life poor
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Nobody would exist who had a decent job and disposable income but "doesn't pay for music" or "doesn't pay for porn" But they obviously do
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The way people would frame this if they were serious about this being about the poor having a right to enjoy art is that it's price discrimination, it's doing you a favor
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The argument that it SHOULD be free, the NATURAL price for all information is zero, you can't MAKE me pay anything for it even if I'm the richest person in the world is massively destructive All by itself that attitude sabotages the pay-what-you-want price discrimination model
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After all you just gave them moral permission to pay zero It's not me putting it up for free as a favor to the fans, and saying "You have a moral obligation to pay what you can" It's me doing my ETHICAL DUTY to release something that NATURALLY IS FREE
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And turns me from a laborer offering a sliding scale of payment to just a beggar asking you to give me money out of charity So people give less, often a lot less
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End of conversation
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