The morality isn't about the perceived value, or the utility, but rather the motivation behind the purchase: When you buy an Apple product, you aren't speculat

The morality isn't about the perceived value, or the utility, but rather the motivation behind the purchase: When you buy an Apple product, you aren't speculating on the value of it in the future (unless you're a scalper) - you're not buying it because you'll be able to sell it for more, or because of it's rarity and you'll get some sort of social boost. You buy the product, and you use it, that's your motivation (could be a tool for work, could be for self expression, you could even choose it because you want to be one of the cool guys as well). When it comes to NFTs, or some trading card games, or even scratch off tickets with prizes, you're buying it because you're expecting to bank on it later, and you hope what you get is extremely rare... the problem is that the majority of this stuff is "rare" for the sake of being "rare", that has no value. A Black Lotus is rare and valuable because the kids that were playing the game 20+ years ago, now have buying power and can finally get a piece of nostalgia, the problem is that there aren't that many around because people used/wore off/destroyed the card. There's an organic process in this that sustained itself for decades -> that's valuable, it's a cultural artifact. Now they want to shorten the length of this organic process to some weeks. How is that sustainable? >You are probably right about no one never did wanted to pay, and that's natural. I didn't say people didn't want to pay, I think they simply couldn't afford it. But there's still value in that: if I didn't get a pirate copy for GTA Vice City I would have never become a fan of the series. There's brand value in that, don't you think? Why not offset the "cost of piracy" as part of the marketing budget :) ?