[c3534l]

This feels... grotesque? The free market is meant to ensure that competitors lower their prices to compete with Disney+. If instead corporations raise prices to compete with... profits over marketshare, then it feels like something has gone terribly wrong.

[aidenn0]

You mean like Disney having a government enforced monopoly on their content that lasts for about a century, combined with changes in technology w.r.t streaming that allow them to never create a "first sale" and thus make it illegal for anybody to possess a copy of their content without paying them a monthly fee that they get to set?

[mikepurvis]

All of this I think just serves to underscore the importance of piracy’s role in the debate — in a world where physical media isn’t rented or loaned out, piracy provides the needed pressure to keep rightsholders honest on price and terms.

[bdw5204]

Whenever there's something that looks like a market failure, there's almost always a governmental grant of monopoly privilege or some government regulation to prevent competition.

Why are prescription drugs unaffordable? Because of a grant of monopoly privilege called "patents" that allow a company to monopolize a drug for around 2 decades. Why is health care so expensive? Because the government subsidizes employer provided insurance through the tax code so nobody cares about controlling medical costs. Why is housing so expensive? Because local governments literally make it illegal to build housing infringing on the private property rights of landowners with idiotic "zoning" laws and by doing things like declaring run down parking lots to be "historic" parking lots that must be preserved. Why is the labor market so skewed against labor and in favor of capital? Because numerous government laws make it harder to start businesses than it should be and also because government subsidizes employers providing "benefits" through the tax code. Why did the railroads collapse and most of the US become dependent upon cars? Because the government regulated the railroads to death with the Interstate Commerce Commission and subsidized both cars and car infrastructure. You can keep going on and on with examples but the answer is almost always something that the government did to screw up the market.

[dehrmann]

> having a government enforced monopoly on their content

Sure, but they're just the only company selling Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. Someone else is selling DC, Illumination, and Star Trek content. They're all competing in the entertainment space, so it's not a real problem for pricing. If Disney opened a $2500 per night Star Wars hotel, I'm pretty sure you'd see market forces react.

[gamblor956]

You could also just...not watch it.

You don't have a right to consume someone else's creations just because you want to.

[add-sub-mul-div]

Another way to say that first part is that after a certain amount of time the government strips away your control over your own creation.

[khazhoux]

I must be the only one that is not bothered by Disney having a permanent monopoly over Disney characters. They created the characters, they nurtured them, and they maintain their image to this day and this is their business. I am not at all compelled by someone who feels it’s now right, because Mickey is part of American culture, to make their own commercial products with that IP.

Design your own damn characters.

[aleph_minus_one]

> The free market is meant to ensure that competitors lower their prices to compete with Disney+. If instead corporations raise prices to compete with... profits over marketshare, then it feels like something has gone terribly wrong.

Why? What an individual provider wants to optimize is

(number of customers) * ((average) profit per customer)

Depending on the market circumstances either lowering the price to attract more customers or increasing the price to increase "(average) profit per customer" can be the business strategy to choose. The economic concept that you are looking for to decide of these two options is the right one is called "price elasticity of demand":

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand

[alephnerd]

> competitors lower their prices to compete with Disney+

That assumes you can substitute goods.

And trust me, you can't substitute Paradise PD for Gravity Falls.

This is why market segmentation exists.

[tunesmith]

I think part of what explains that is that they aren't "competing" in sense of airing the same shows. It's the shows that get marketed, not streaming of generic entertainment.

[CatWChainsaw]

In Monopoly, you win the game when every other player is in a state of permanent poverty/precarity and can never break your power. Don't ever be duped into thinking Monopoly, The Real Life Game, has an end goal that differs in any meaningful sense.

[hiddencost]

Meant to?

By whom?

Who makes sure the system operates that way?

[stubish]

A free market just works this way, and various regulations exist to keep it a free market by stopping things like collusion, corruption, fraud and monopolies. However, in order to protect creators rights, other regulations we call copyright grant monopolies. So the 'free market' is not really a free market. An actual free market per your economics text book is a rare thing.

[harimau777]

That's the pitch that's generally given by advocates of the free market to justify their position. They tend to do so because "the free market" isn't something that is near universally viewed as an inherent good, so it's necessary to convince people that it's existence results in other goods.

[geodel]

Marketshare at any cost sounds like startup bullshit to me.

[486sx33]

In manufacturing we called it “dumping”

[nicoburns]

> The free market ... feels like something has gone terribly wrong.

Well yes. It has done for several decades at this point. It's a classic case of Goodhart's Law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". In this case the measure is the market price of a good/service and/or the profitability of a business. It is assumed by free-market capitalism to be a good measure of societal value, and it was, more or less. But over time that's become less and less true as people over optimise for the metric.

[gruez]

>If instead corporations raise prices to compete with... profits over marketshare, then it feels like something has gone terribly wrong.

wait till you hear about luxury brands

[pushupentry1219]

> The free market is meant to ensure that competitors lower their prices to compete with Disney+.

> it feels like something has gone terribly wrong.

I don't meant to be rude, but I am going to be: have you had your head in the sand for the last.. decade and a half? Something has gone terribly wrong and it's late stage capitalism.