ToxicCapitalism

Stolen Car

A couple's car gets stolen. They post to Reddit with the headline, "Car was recently stolen out of our driveway and we realized it twenty minutes before work started on a Monday." Really? That's the headline when your car gets stolen; that you might be late for work. Have you so deeply foregone your personal identity in favor of your employer that you care more about how your car getting stolen affects them than how it affects you? Or are you worried that you'll get negative points at work for having the temerity to have your car stolen? Either one of those is profoundly disturbed. And not a single comment in the Reddit thread picked up on it. Because it's not weird to us, Americans. That is a normal way to think.

Let me be clear: I'm not sledging the people for thinking that way. I'm saying our society is profoundly disturbing if we think of the minimal impact to our employers is the headline when a person's car gets stolen. That is a severely toxic relationship.

Copyright

• Media Unmasking Commenters (failed): https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/15jmneo/whoops/
• Ubisoft Closes Account for Inactivity: https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/153d3r9/i_have_games_that_i_bought_at_full_retail_price/
• Streaming: https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/15xf40p/techs_broken_promises_streaming_is_now_just_as/
• University Copyright: https://old.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/16q8eqs/cool_madlad_professor/

Reflection 1

Copyright extremism has been steadily marching forward, Weird Al offers this recommendation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoBestFriendsPlay/comments/ynbu3v/weird_al_yankovic_on_how_international_fans_can/

Original copyright was 7 years, plus 7 additional years if you re-upped. After that, the deal was that things entered the public domain. There is a public interest in being able to reflect upon the zeitgeist without limitation after its initial pop revenue stream has been harvested.

Now copyright is life of the author + 125 years with extreme laws limiting you even from making your own copies of material you have purchased. Nothing new has entered the public domain since Mickey Mouse's first cartoon.

Copyright, like capitalism and socialism, is a fine economic mechanism in itself. But it becomes toxic when a subset of stakeholders engage in regulatory capture.

Current extremist copyright does more harm than good and should be attacked at every opportunity. Anchors aweigh and hoist the Jolly Roger - pirate that shit.

And while I have no specific recommendations, since I have simply eschewed corporate media rather than consuming it properly - which is to say illegally but rightly - I would recommend this as a starting point:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/

Reflection 2

"But after 14 years (7 + 7), it is still possible for a Taylor Swift album to generate billions in revenue."

That is true, but why is that the measure of whether it should remain under copyright? Possible reasons:

1. Because society will be better if we increase the amount of reward given to copyrighted works producers, at the expense of copyrighted works consumers and derivative works creators.
2. Because increased cashflow is always good.
3. Because the fact that people are willing to pay for it necessarily implies that it should be gated and access to it should have a toll.

Price Theory: Supply & Demand

The fundamental nature of an efficient market price is that the intersection of the supply curve and the demand curve results in a (somewhat, depending on the associated elasticities) balance of value to each side. The triangle between the demand curve and the market price is the benefit accrued to the buyers. The triangle between the supply curve and the market price is the the benefit accrued to the supplier.

Market segmentation, such as the Balkanization of streaming, is a way for suppliers to "beat" the market price phenomenon. They effectively slice up the market to the left of the intersection and turn the integrate the price more closely to the demand curve in a series of steps.

The result is more wealth flowing to capital owners and less to consumers.

Question: What are some demand side equivalents? How can we stimulate them when market segmentation becomes harmful to the benevolence of capitalism?

Laissez-Faire Lying

Black Friday Sale Pricing: https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/183vyyd/im_no_consumer_rights_lawyer_but_this_seems/

There is a justification I occasionally hear from laissez-faire capitalists, about various questions of anti-social behavior by corporations, that would be applied to this example like this:

If the same product is available for the same price, and the only change is lying to the customer, and the customer purchases more units, it indicates increased customer satisfaction. The market is saying, "We prefer to be lied to." And the distributor is satisfying the demand.

Generalized: "If something we do increases profit, it must mean it is good."

It's the laissez-faire capitalist version of, "The Lord works in mysterious ways." It's a hand-waving that means, "We don't have to have independent metrics of societal value to validate doctrinal law."