Bestsellers can keep on raking in "excess profit" at $9.99 a copy forever and become idle millionaires Indie creators can be massively in debt and still get someone who "loved" their movie and "wants them to succeed" be like "I'll pay full price for the DVD, that's $15 right"
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I think about this especially as a live theatre fan (and, formerly, performer) who is familiar with the sticker shock pretty much everyone gets when you try to get them to come to a show and they don't typically go to live theatre
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"$20 a ticket?! For a tiny independent community theatre production? That's as much as seeing Avengers Endgame on opening night! How much are your actors getting paid?!" They're getting paid nothing dude
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That's the price *floor* for live theatre, that's what you pay for a show that's only trying to recoup its expenses for rent and materials and a couple of full-time office employees, with all the talent being volunteers
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Live theatre that's actually run like a business where the actors are being paid something approximating a decent wage for their labor starts in the $50-100 range and goes up rapidly from there I'm sorry, but that's how much it actually costs
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The price can go down if you go to a very popular show in a big auditorium But since live theatre is not a movie and the labor cost of actually doing the show cannot be infinitely reproduced over thousands of screening rooms it cannot go below that $20 floor
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For most people who are used to watching movies this is just emotional sticker shock and they get over it For some people this really bothers them on a fundamental level Being upset that there are prices you can't drive toward zero is what they call "Baumol's cost disease"
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I know people are cheap and like free stuff, but I place a lot of blame on the tech guys of the late ‘90s who argued all industries should be disrupted and stuff should be cheaper.
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Replying to @pjrodriguez @arthur_affect
I sincerely don't think nearly as many people would have been so eagerly receptive to the '90s tech guy idea that everything should be cheaper if they weren't getting squeezed so hard by the simple fact that, for most of us, cost-of-living goes up, but income doesn't anymore.
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Replying to @autogynamelia @pjrodriguez
It's a feedback loop The reason customers generally suck is because we're all getting shafted as workers and the only power we seem to have is as customers ("The customer is always right") It's a deliberate divide and conquer strategy
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And I do mean deliberate, with no hyperbole The concept of a "consumer advocate" was something pushed by bosses and stockholders (even though they're supposed to be the enemies of profit on paper) as a counterbalance to the PR clout of unions
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Replying to @arthur_affect @pjrodriguez
The 80s was when plutocrats committed hard to the idea they'd rather charge low prices and pay low wages than charge high prices and pay high wages Customers are a much easier opponent in the game of capitalism to handle than employees Customers are, by definition, ignorant
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Replying to @arthur_affect @pjrodriguez
That's what, again, gets me about all this It's all one thing, it's one social trend killing all of us The general sentiment that "your labor isn't worth that much and you're an asshole for demanding I pay for it when I'm poor too"
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