I understand your frustration, but I think you also have to keep in mind that it’s not a binary true/false success condition. Plenty of partial success can still be had in the gray area in between, and partial success has its own proportional rewards. Realistically we’re never going to solve 100% of the problem this way (or probably any way). But what we can do is shrink the proportions of the problem. Yes, there are always going to be people paying many thousands of dollars for Taylor Swift tickets and people preordering the next Assassin’s Creed game or whatever. But by shifting your own purchasing decisions away from such things, and hopefully with the cooperation of many other people also making the same shift, you start to funnel more money into the artists and games that don’t do that. You make that area of the creative space richer with your money, and then those creatives make their art richer with the money you’re supplying. As a result, we earn better future rewards for ourselves without having to participate in the behaviors we find objectionable. We are all working together, this is a collective effort, and even partial success is a perfectly appealing goal on its own. The more success the better, but I’ll take any success we can get, because every little bit counts and every little bit makes the situation a little bit better.
Very solid points. Well said. I was only thinking of the condition of stops or doesn’t stop rising prices and that needs x amount of the market to do so. The other half I didn’t consider. Thank you for taking the time
I understand your frustration, but I think you also have to keep in mind that it’s not a binary true/false success condition. Plenty of partial success can still be had in the gray area in between, and partial success has its own proportional rewards. Realistically we’re never going to solve 100% of the problem this way (or probably any way). But what we can do is shrink the proportions of the problem. Yes, there are always going to be people paying many thousands of dollars for Taylor Swift tickets and people preordering the next Assassin’s Creed game or whatever. But by shifting your own purchasing decisions away from such things, and hopefully with the cooperation of many other people also making the same shift, you start to funnel more money into the artists and games that don’t do that. You make that area of the creative space richer with your money, and then those creatives make their art richer with the money you’re supplying. As a result, we earn better future rewards for ourselves without having to participate in the behaviors we find objectionable. We are all working together, this is a collective effort, and even partial success is a perfectly appealing goal on its own. The more success the better, but I’ll take any success we can get, because every little bit counts and every little bit makes the situation a little bit better.
Very solid points. Well said. I was only thinking of the condition of stops or doesn’t stop rising prices and that needs x amount of the market to do so. The other half I didn’t consider. Thank you for taking the time