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Everyone cites profit, profit, profit as what makes Market Capitalism work, but even more important than profit is competition. Disney owns an intellectual prop
by ideonexus 11y ago
Everyone cites profit, profit, profit as what makes Market Capitalism work, but even more important than profit is competition. Disney owns an intellectual property monopoly on the Star Wars universe. If the Star Wars toy lines have a ginormous blind spot and completely ignore the huge market of female consumers, then no one else can fill that gap--no one else can compete. The only recourse consumers have is to complain on social media, blogs, and in the news and hope the corporate overlords deem their consumer demands worthy of fulfilling.
Monopolies completely undermine capitalist economies. We see the same thing with utilities, where one company has a regional monopoly on the electric grid, internet service, or water, consumers suffer from the lack of competition. So the government steps in to regulate.
I'm not saying the government should regulate the Star Wars universe to ensure female consumer demands are met, people should instead flock to science fiction/fantasy universes that meet their needs, but--as you note--those other universes don't have the corporate backing to get films into theaters. I enjoy Star Wars and Star Trek, but after 40 and 50 years of playing around in these mythoses, I would really like to see new worlds explored more deeply by the mass public.
- dawnbreez 11y agoFirst, I'd like to mention that The Expanse is pretty damn good hard sci-fi. Secondly, the main problem of making scifi flicks is their cost. The Expanse is getting a TV series because George R.R. Martin is backing it and the books sold amazingly well. You'll need a pretty big Kickstarter to match that.