>This is induced scarcity and I hate everything about it.
I mean, I "hate" having to pay for stuff in stores too (markups and all). Like it or not those "zero marginal production cost" products don't have zero cost to develop, so "induced scarcity" (aka. charging the user) is basically the best way to recoup development costs.
IMO, this is an obvious weakness in the capitalist model. Money is supposed to be a social reward for solving problems for people. But they turn this on its head by inducing scarcity on something that is inherently NOT scarce. This is, IMO, anti-social and should not be rewarded by us as a society. We should reward things that create solutions, not things that create artificial scarcity. It's corrosive to capitalism itself.
I do not have a solution for this, but the fact that it's a problem is obvious to me, and the fact it will only get worse with time is also obvious.
> an obvious weakness in the capitalist model... by inducing scarcity on something that is inherently NOT scarce
Which is actually NOT part of the capitalist model at all, but rather social engineering (i.e. socialism) where the government circumvents capitalism for the sake of inducing a particular desired social outcome. In the capitalist model property rights only exist as a consequence of natural scarcity. Copyright does not exist in the capitalist model.
>Money is supposed to be a social reward for solving problems for people. But they turn this on its head by inducing scarcity on something that is inherently NOT scarce.
I don't see how the first sentence contradicts the second sentence. Audi is solving problems (a hot car) for people, by providing a product (an AC). The fact that they're "inducing scarcity" or whatever is orthogonal to this.
>I do not have a solution for this, but the fact that it's a problem is obvious to me, and the fact it will only get worse with time is also obvious.
The fact that you don't have a solution for this suggests that this is a necessary evil that has to exist for society/the economy to work properly. I find it pretty undemocratic and unjust that the government has forces me to make payments to it (ie. taxes). That doesn't mean it's "corrosive" to a democratic/free/just society.
In my view, it is not orthogonal to it at all, we should maximize utility for society instead Audi is incentivized by intentionally diminishing it.
> The fact that you don't have a solution for this suggests that this is a necessary evil that has to exist for society/the economy to work properly.
My, or your lack of imagination as to a solution for this does not prove a solution does not exist, nor does it prove we should not search for one. If everyone along history thought like that, we would still be living in caves.
> In my view, it is not orthogonal to it at all, we should maximize utility for society instead Audi is incentivized by intentionally diminishing it.
If you're talking about utility, the standard argument in support of it would be the same one used for copyright/patents, ie. "even though there's utility to be gained by prohibiting such restrictions and granting access to the product for everyone, the lack of scarcity will eliminate the profit motive from future endeavors, and will therefore eliminate future investment/research making us worse off in the future"
>My, or your lack of imagination as to a solution for this does not prove a solution does not exist, nor does it prove we should not search for one. If everyone along history thought like that, we would still be living in caves.
That's true, but at the same time it seems rather pointless to complain about how something is "corrosive to capitalism" when there isn't an obvious solution. Going back to my previous example, I'd love to live in a world where we can get public services (comparable to today's levels) and not pay any taxes. However, if there's no viable alternative in sight I'm not going to complain about it. I also recognize that even though there might some yet undiscovered funding model that doesn't involve compulsory payments, it realistically doesn't exist or is hundreds of years away, so searching for it seems like a fools errand.
Because that's how they decided to sell it. Why should you pay for a book, music, a movie, software? They're not selling these things out of the goodness of their heart, it's to make money.
You might be new around here, but there's this thing called Free Software where (although that isn't why the word "Free" is there) the marginal charge for more copies is indeed less than five cents and often effectively zero.
Of course modifying the software isn't cheap, unless you're going to learn how and do it on your own time, but that's not a marginal cost
Not so new, but if we price things soley on manufacturing costs Apple products should be a factor 2-3 cheaper while Windows and Office should cost, what, a Dollar max? Not to even think about luxury and brand name stuff. Manufacturing cost is only part of the price calculation, software just sits at one extreme end of the spectrum.
Disclaimer: My private daily driver runs Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
But it doesn't have 0 marginal cost - the R&D that went into developing the hardware needs to be recouped and a profit generated; just because the cost is virtual, in missed profit, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I mean, I "hate" having to pay for stuff in stores too (markups and all). Like it or not those "zero marginal production cost" products don't have zero cost to develop, so "induced scarcity" (aka. charging the user) is basically the best way to recoup development costs.