[eat_veggies]

It sounds good but price ceilings rarely help people. The free market generally does a good enough job at finding the optimal price. It's easy enough to say that movie theater owners are greedy and just want more money, but that's exactly why they're even in the business--to make money. If you remove that incentive, they really have to reason to continue operating.

You can see this in action in New York with its rent controls: the government decided the common man needed to be able to afford housing. Seems like a noble goal, but soon landlords couldn't afford to fix their houses or pay for utilities, and so they left the market. And nobody was going to start a new apartment and nobody was going to fund one because it's unprofitable. As a result, the housing situation is even worse than how it was before.

[codegladiator]

There is no free market. They would sell popcorn at 2x the movie ticket cost. And the movie ticket costs are absurd here in karnataka. And its all one player game.

[sterex]

I understand what you are trying to say, but the movie ticket prices had sky rocketed beyond reach of a large section of the population. Now, you may argue that it is somehow the loss of the multiplexes by alienating people, but movies are somewhat of a necessity for cultural and social reasons.

Imagine having a consortium of telecom companies deciding to charge $100/Gb of data (assuming they are making profit nevertheless). There is no incentive for them to reduce the price.

To give you an example, a movie ticket would cost upto $20 in an economy where a bottle of water costs ~$0.2.