I’m no economist, but it’s interesting how a free market and more competition doesn’t result in a better product for consumers. Just each company going “oh, the other guy raised their prices, let’s do the same or we’ll fall behind”
It’s crazy how consumers just keep eating the higher prices too, instead of rebelling by cutting their spending. I’ve been wondering if people are just charging everything and we’re going to hit a major recession when everyone runs out of credit. I sure hope not! I’ve already gone through too many “once in a lifetime” economic events.
I can’t believe this sort of thing is even a story. Guess most folks can’t run a privateer.
In any case, I’m still looting and pillaging because damned if I trust my movies and books to an outfit that can take them away from me on a whim. I’ve got data from '98 or so, all backed to Google Drive and locally. No matter what, I can still have my media.
The idea is supposed to be that these things wax and wane. And they mostly do.
We started stealing music with Napster -> the market eventually started offering affordable alternatives
We started stealing movies with The Pirate Bay -> studios finally came onboard with streaming
We stole games -> market reacted with serviced like Steam that make it too cheap and easy to bother pirating
And now that streaming greed seems to be biting them in the ass, we’re due for another market correction.
We’ll see, but I never stopped pirating. Only thing I pay for is Spotify because it’s too damned convenient to get the music I want, anywhere I want, for $10/mo. Spotify: Test me with higher prices or stop me from making local downloads and I’ll drop back to stealing that shit too.
I’m no economist, but it’s interesting how a free market and more competition doesn’t result in a better product for consumers. Just each company going “oh, the other guy raised their prices, let’s do the same or we’ll fall behind”
It’s crazy how consumers just keep eating the higher prices too, instead of rebelling by cutting their spending. I’ve been wondering if people are just charging everything and we’re going to hit a major recession when everyone runs out of credit. I sure hope not! I’ve already gone through too many “once in a lifetime” economic events.
I can’t believe this sort of thing is even a story. Guess most folks can’t run a privateer.
In any case, I’m still looting and pillaging because damned if I trust my movies and books to an outfit that can take them away from me on a whim. I’ve got data from '98 or so, all backed to Google Drive and locally. No matter what, I can still have my media.
Absolutely. It all disappears in the general mass of their credit card payments. It becomes disconnected from individual cost.
The idea is supposed to be that these things wax and wane. And they mostly do.
We started stealing music with Napster -> the market eventually started offering affordable alternatives
We started stealing movies with The Pirate Bay -> studios finally came onboard with streaming
We stole games -> market reacted with serviced like Steam that make it too cheap and easy to bother pirating
And now that streaming greed seems to be biting them in the ass, we’re due for another market correction.
We’ll see, but I never stopped pirating. Only thing I pay for is Spotify because it’s too damned convenient to get the music I want, anywhere I want, for $10/mo. Spotify: Test me with higher prices or stop me from making local downloads and I’ll drop back to stealing that shit too.