3 ms·

If it's not "market failure", what do you call it when you either can't buy it at all, or it's made extremely difficult to do so?

• myrryr 10y ago
  It is a market failure. There exists a product, which is easily reproduced and simple to transport. These exists people who wish to purchase the product, and pay a fair price to do so - but cannot. It is the classic example of market failure.
  • rayvd 10y ago
    I think the market would readily like to solve the problem, save for regulations, laws and cronyism...
    • will_hughes 10y ago
      Depends on who you view as "the market". There's zero competition in the distribution/publishing side of things for a movie - i.e a retailer can't choose to buy Star Wars from anyone other than Disney, or the Bourne films from anyone other than Universal. They have no potential incentive to be more responsive to market demands. Market Segmentation is a great way to ensure the highest revenue per sale, so they sell it into each market for as much as the market will support. Then there's exclusivity arrangements in the online side of things - so I can't get (say) Game of Thrones on Netflix. In Australia I have to subscribe to Foxtel and pay a fortune for premium channels, and if I want to watch it online, well, I can get a pretty crummy quality stream in some other painful to use app. Or I can wait 12 months and buy it on DVD/Bluray, which are still only 1080p. The distributors/publishers are free to fix that, today, if they wanted to - but they don't. So griping about "regulations, laws and cronyism" doesn't ring true. (Well, maybe the last)