Are we the baddies?

"Price discrimination is not okay"

Isn't this a reasonable way to achieve many desirable results? Hardcovers/paperbacks, watch a movie right away or after a few weeks, etc.

Hardcovers last longer, resource use is real. Cheap things is a regressive tax on the lower incomes who have to replace cheap stuff faster. They can’t save for better stuff.

When it comes to media like movies… really? Still? The resource use of Top Gun and Star Wars is bonkers. Can’t we just have local theater and you know socialize?

Do we need the movie to come together and socialize over?

I so thought we were done with that stuff around Spider-Man 3. MCU and Star Wars sequels made no sense to me.

Is our attention always going to be coupled to Saturday mornings in 1990s?

Boomers did all the drugs and made music and corny fun shows like SNL and somehow convinced us to stare at computers iterating on word problems like it’s fucking middle school while staring at these over the top delusions of grandeur to borrow from Han Solo.

Paperbacks are _not_ a regressive tax. The book is equally readable in both forms, and often more portable in paperback. Hardcover books are (mild) luxury items that can command a higher profit margin and thus are easier for publishers to justify. Very few individuals are buying hardcover books in order to maximize utility over many decades

?

That's not price discrimination, like hardcover vs paperback if you have two versions of something and people can choose which they want. That's totally fine and actually something that makes capitalism great. The rich usually end up covering more of the costs here cause they are less price sensitive, like business vs economy on airplanes.

Price discrimination is when two people visit a site to buy a book, the algorithm computes an estimate of what they are barely willing to pay, and then shows the two of them different prices for the exact same book based on who they are.

Yours is an overly narrow version of price discrimination in which the discrimination is extended to the customer level. If that's what OP meant he should use a less ambiguous description.

The comment you replied to is OP clarifying his description.

OK thanks.