Yep, a basic premise of economics is that wants are infinite. If you have the universe, you’ll want two universes.
K9 talked about entertainment and us having all we want. Well, I want Season 2 of Firefly and can’t have it. If I had enough money I could, but I don’t, so I can’t.
Okay, well, I was planning on watching a movie tonight. I suppose I will have to wait until you are done watching it before I can. Let me know, please, as apparently, you have informed me that there is a scarce supply of digital copies of movies.
Another thing that there is little scarcity of is room for quotes on a messagebaord. So, you don’t need to be so skimpy as to take a single line out of a paragraph, and then make the erroneous assumption that it stands on its own.
You should take advantage of this lack of scarcity, as it seems you get yourself confused when you take another’s words out of context like that. I, of course, assume that it was only a concern about the scarcity of bits that causes you to truncate my post in such a misleading manner.
Well, that’s just the thing. If enough of us want a season 2 of Firefly, then it becomes more likely that we all get a season 2 of Firefly. You don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough money, but the adoring fans collectively, we have enough money. This is the exact opposite of the argument that the two of you are trying to make. Higher demand increases the supply of original entertainment options, and the supply to the individual is unlimited.
You are confused, in that you are talking about the non-existence of a thing, vs the scarcity of a thing. Those are two entirely different concepts. If something doesn’t exist, then no one can have it. If only one of a thing exists, the only one person can have it. If only a thousand of a thing exists, then only a thousand of us can have it.
You know why they spent billions of dollars on MCU movies? Because there were quite a number of people who were willing to go see them. How much did the latest Avenger’s ticket cost, vs the latest low budget indie flick at your local theater? Hmmm, they cost the same, didn’t they? If what you are thinking of as scarcity of tangible items holds true for digital, then it seems that the higher demand should have raised the ticket price, should it not have?
Do you understand this concept now? Or are there other non-existent things that you think make economics not work. Does the non-existence of unicorns have anything to do with the price of tea in China, in your view?
How many copies of Firefly Season 1 are there? If all the copies are in use, and someone wants to watch it, does someone need to stop watching it in order for a new person to do so?
How do the two of you justify your assertion that there is a limit to the number of copies of a digital product that would result in a scarcity of a product?
Digital copies of something aren’t the only wants. And on the subject of marginal costs of digital products you wouldn’t have certain digital products without huge upfront costs. Intellectual property rights are protected in civilized societies for a reason.
This Is getting well of the track of the Op.
Given how good we are at inventing jobs, this isn’t a serious concern.
Figuring out how to retrain people is a serious concern.
I figure job one in that project is to stop promising them that dead industries are going to magically resurrect themselves if we kill enough trans people.
Your claim though is not that there are effectively infinite copies of current digital media. Your claim is that we have the ability to meet infinite wants. If all that humanity wants is a digital copy of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, then you’re right. We can meet that want. Unfortunately, I think that there are a couple of other things people want. Part of the nature of wants are things that don’t exist. I want to own a hundred thousand acre nature preserve. I want Firefly season 2. I want a garage full of 60s era Jaguars. Humanity is not able to meet those wants.
I did not say that they are the only wants. I said that that form of want can be fulfilled. I also said, in the very post that you responded to, that the more people that want something, the more likely it is to be produced, and that is specifically because of upfront costs.
As far as intellectual property rights, that’s nice and all, but it does not, in any way shape or form, prevent the owner of those rights from producing as many copies as they want to produce. Any scarcity, as I said in the previous post that Shodan took the single line out of context from, would be artificial.
I am assuming, by your tone, that you are trying to disagree here, but nothing in your post actually is any sort of argument against what I said.
That is only true if you think that the line that Shodan took out of my post was the entirety of the post. As there were words both before and after that that qualified and explained that statement, I would prefer that you did not fall into the same confusion that Shodan did, after he forgot about the words that he cut out to save scarce bits.
I’m not in the least confused. You can’t make a copy of something unless it is created in the first place, which costs money.
It’s more likely to be produced if more people are willing to pay for it. If people expect it to be given away free, then it won’t.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m sure this digression about wants vs. needs and whether they can be met and so forth is very interesting, but it’s really a very large departure from a thread about media coverage of Representative-Elect Occasio-Cortez. Might I request that you guys having that discussion start a new thread for that?
Speaking as a poster, not a moderator (it’s not my forum), in case that isn’t clear.
Conservative media is obsessed with AOC because they need a villain and she checks a lot of boxes. AOC is an extension of the migrant horde coming to the border, she represents the end of white dominance in American culture and politics. Because the American conservative movement is not in any way aspirational, it needs to constantly be generating hate and outrage; if you take away racism and hatred from American conservatism, there really isn’t anything left: they’re not about small government, they’re clearly not about fiscal responsibility and they definitely aren’t about rule of law.
Probably because she says hilariously ill-informed things and it’s just too tempting for them to resist. I don’t think it’s because she’s a minority, it’s because she’s opposite ideologically and easy prey.
I mean, when she talks about “the three chambers of government: the House, the Senate, and the presidency”, that’s not a simple gaffe, that’s her demonstrating she has no idea what she’s talking about. And that’s tempting for a conservative to point that out. And since she keeps doing it, well…
She’s pretty much the Sarah Palin of the left. Does that make it clear from your perspective?
No she hasn’t been nominated for anything, but she also hasn’t done anything and she has made it on Bernie’s coattails. A guy who is a similar figure to Palin in his own right.
That assertion is ridiculous.
If she’s the closest anyone on the left gets to Sarah Palin, then we’re doing pretty well.
I honestly don’t know much about her, other than she’s Hispanic, pretty and was elected to Congress. Upon googling, she appears to have come from a home of maybe not wealth, but certainly not a working class one (her dad was an architect and founding partner of his firm). She was also a bartender, and an organizer for Sanders’ 2016 presidential run.
Which doesn’t tell me a damn thing about her actual qualifications to be a Representative, or opining on things at a national level.
What it does make me suspect is that she’s the political equivalent of a boy band; essentially manufactured because she met the requisite criteria for the party to support her bid for Congress. I mean, most 29 year olds, no matter how competent or intelligent, are going to be able to run for Congress successfully, certainly not ones who were probably tending bar a couple of years before being involved in politics in any real capacity.
That’s a big part of why I think a lot of people are looking at her with a skeptical eye, and I suspect what the right-wing types are fixating on.
She ran AGAINST the Party favorite in the primary, and won.
The right-wing types voted for a game show host for president who thinks that a rake is the best tool against forest fires. They don’t have standing to belittle anyone else’s intelligence.
The three chambers thing is something I might consider just a gaffe, like Obama’s 57 states. The issue is more than she tells these whoppers, and then seems to want to base policy on them. As in “unemployment is low because everybody is working three jobs” and then she wants the Federal government to guarantee that everyone has a job. That goes beyond a gaffe and into delusion.
You are confusing “white” with “liberal”.
Regards,
Shodan
Trump is a liberal?