Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:31:

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:22:
That the world is fucked up as it is is exactly because everyone has to cheat someone else out of money in order to survive. And remember, your income is someone else's debt. Every cent you earn, someone else loses. Capitalism is to put it bluntly, a system designed to kill the human race in the long-term. Because greed is infinite, but resources are not.

Which is why I still advocate for going back to the 1940s-1970s tax brackets. Back then, every dollar over $X was taxed upwards of 91%. So, if you're an employer, why would you bother making over that? You keep nine cents on the dollar. It made much more sense for you to instead let someone else earn it. This gave us a middle class and gave everyone nice wages to spend in stores.

Now? It's like you said, for me to make an extra dollar someone higher up at my company has to make a dollar less. And why would they choose to do that? It isn't like they aren't working hard, and it isn't like I'm threatening to leave, so why not keep that money for themselves?

And, hence, jumps up the corporate ladder don't pay off immensely until you actually have budget control and can argue that a larger percentage of it goes to you, and the owners of your company (be it one man or a large group of shareholders) will do everything they can to keep you from earning more because that's then them earning less.

I fully agree with you there... it's befuddling our governments are not changing course when they still can.... or at least theoretically could.

yuastnav wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 20:25:

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:22:

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:15:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:10:
Perhaps the gaming industry will have to figure out how to do more with less, just like everyone else.

If you ran things, they would. Budgets would plummet as AAA games went for $10 and indie game sold for $0.99. When budgets fall, layoffs happen and quality goes with it.

This would be no problem if everyone had a standard income that is high enough to sustain life by default (no matter his situation, rich or not)....

If every human being could without money pressure decide what to actually do in life then we would have cheap games of insane high quality, because only people who LOVE making games would be making games. And they would not care about ROI. This would further boost social services (done by people, for people, without payment) because someone who knows for sure he won't starve next month might notice he enjoys helping others who are ill or need help.

That the world is fucked up as it is is exactly because everyone has to cheat someone else out of money in order to survive. And remember, your income is someone else's debt. Every cent you earn, someone else loses. Capitalism is to put it bluntly, a system designed to kill the human race in the long-term. Because greed is infinite, but resources are not.

Hmm.

Isn't that basically almost technocratic communism?
There is no money but food and items like clothing, cars etc. are made by machines and are free for anyone to acquire and use while everyone is able to pursue science, art etc. and barely anyone does menial labour? In an extremely simplified way, of course. Not sure how exactly that would work out in reality.

I am not sure how it would work in reality of course, nobody tried it on the scale required to make it an proper experiment (ie, at least a few nations would have to do it at once and coordinated, because export/import/immigration/emigration would be a huge problem otherwise)

I would also not do away with money at least not in the next 200 years, it could be done with a simple monthly cash payment that EVERY citizen get's with no exceptions, everyone that is citizen gets that money. Monthly, until death.

But I would be employing some tricks. I would make the money decay at the end of a monthly period and pay-out date is randomized so that not everyone gets money at the same day. This way prices can not be jacked up because everyone has money at a certain point in time that is in any way predictable. Also it would have to be DNA encoded or something.

In the end you have to realize I do not want to replace capitalism, I want to fix the problem with capitalism. Namely that people can not do what they LOVE to do because it might pay so badly currently that it's impossible to do that without starving. And this has a feedback loop into everything we consider "culture" culture is not made by companies, culture is made by people who use their lives to enrich other people's lives.... and the more we can somehow get people to do this, the more culture and science we would be able to gain from it. Imagine how much art, music, entertainment we could have if people would no longer have to cater to a mass market! They could do art for 10 people specifically for those 10 people, and they could do it without having to worry about their rent, heating, food or electricity bill. Capitalism by design does not allow for something like this. And the people who do it despite this are scraping at the bottom.

In a way maybe it's more like a technocratic culture economy. The goal is to promote science and culture because the first improves our life, and the latter enriches it..

Whether it can ever work in a true "utopia" style system I REALLY doubt. Menial labor has to be rewarded or nobody is gonna do it. And we need systems in place to trade... and this is where I am not sure how to handle it. Because trade is always a loss of resources for the producing party that no amount of money or exchanged goods can balance.

If you "trade" an IPAD you have a few thousand resources in your hand that would have to be 100% recycled and RETURNED to wherever you bought it from in order to have trade even work. And this becomes an issue with stuff you can not recycle too.... and why is this a problem? Well remember electricity and water are used in most production steps in some way. And even if you return the resources, the producer still has to employ more electricity and water in order to re-produce with those recycled resources whatever it is he wants to produce.

So at least in theory, this system would fall apart if a nation were not able to produce everything itself, if given the resources.

This comment was edited on Oct 6, 2014, 21:51.

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:22:

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:15:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:10:
Perhaps the gaming industry will have to figure out how to do more with less, just like everyone else.

If you ran things, they would. Budgets would plummet as AAA games went for $10 and indie game sold for $0.99. When budgets fall, layoffs happen and quality goes with it.

This would be no problem if everyone had a standard income that is high enough to sustain life by default (no matter his situation, rich or not)....

If every human being could without money pressure decide what to actually do in life then we would have cheap games of insane high quality, because only people who LOVE making games would be making games. And they would not care about ROI. This would further boost social services (done by people, for people, without payment) because someone who knows for sure he won't starve next month might notice he enjoys helping others who are ill or need help.

That the world is fucked up as it is is exactly because everyone has to cheat someone else out of money in order to survive. And remember, your income is someone else's debt. Every cent you earn, someone else loses. Capitalism is to put it bluntly, a system designed to kill the human race in the long-term. Because greed is infinite, but resources are not.

Hmm.

Isn't that basically almost technocratic communism?
There is no money but food and items like clothing, cars etc. are made by machines and are free for anyone to acquire and use while everyone is able to pursue science, art etc. and barely anyone does menial labour? In an extremely simplified way, of course. Not sure how exactly that would work out in reality.

Cutter wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:56:
Cheaper prices are made up on volume so it all comes out in the wash.

Again, Cutter the economic genius.
It only gets made up in volume if people buy multiple. Again, what's the primary limiting factor for most gamers? Is it money to spend on software, or is it time to actually play the games?

If the price fell 90%, you'd have to buy 10x more games. Do you really think you'd do that?

Cheaper prices are made up on volume so it all comes out in the wash.

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:10:
Perhaps the gaming industry will have to figure out how to do more with less, just like everyone else.

Yeah, great idea. Let's dramatically lower the production quality and depth of games across the board by slashing budgets. Everything can be at a Kickstarter/Early Access level of quality. That really benefits us as gamers.

Kickstarter has already shown us what game developers can do with a more limited budget. They can make a decent game, usually pretty short on content and polish, and that's if they have a really tight focused design. Imagine games with a Kickstarter type budget AND the oversight of a penny pinching publisher. Hooo boy.

I'd rather pay $50 for a good game than $50 for five mediocre games. My time is valuable to me, and I already have more games than I have time to play them. What's cheaper games going to get me? Not much, since due to time constraints I end up buying most games on sale to begin with.

Games just aren't expensive. They are a ridiculously cheap hobby, particularly on the PC with Steam sales and the like.

I worry more about quality than I worry about price.

eRe4s3r wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:22:
That the world is fucked up as it is is exactly because everyone has to cheat someone else out of money in order to survive. And remember, your income is someone else's debt. Every cent you earn, someone else loses. Capitalism is to put it bluntly, a system designed to kill the human race in the long-term. Because greed is infinite, but resources are not.

Which is why I still advocate for going back to the 1940s-1970s tax brackets. Back then, every dollar over $X was taxed upwards of 91%. So, if you're an employer, why would you bother making over that? You keep nine cents on the dollar. It made much more sense for you to instead let someone else earn it. This gave us a middle class and gave everyone nice wages to spend in stores.

Now? It's like you said, for me to make an extra dollar someone higher up at my company has to make a dollar less. And why would they choose to do that? It isn't like they aren't working hard, and it isn't like I'm threatening to leave, so why not keep that money for themselves?

And, hence, jumps up the corporate ladder don't pay off immensely until you actually have budget control and can argue that a larger percentage of it goes to you, and the owners of your company (be it one man or a large group of shareholders) will do everything they can to keep you from earning more because that's then them earning less.

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:15:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:10:
Perhaps the gaming industry will have to figure out how to do more with less, just like everyone else.

If you ran things, they would. Budgets would plummet as AAA games went for $10 and indie game sold for $0.99. When budgets fall, layoffs happen and quality goes with it.

This would be no problem if everyone had a standard income that is high enough to sustain life by default (no matter his situation, rich or not)....

If every human being could without money pressure decide what to actually do in life then we would have cheap games of insane high quality, because only people who LOVE making games would be making games. And they would not care about ROI. This would further boost social services (done by people, for people, without payment) because someone who knows for sure he won't starve next month might notice he enjoys helping others who are ill or need help.

That the world is fucked up as it is is exactly because everyone has to cheat someone else out of money in order to survive. And remember, your income is someone else's debt. Every cent you earn, someone else loses. Capitalism is to put it bluntly, a system designed to kill the human race in the long-term. Because greed is infinite, but resources are not.

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 18:10:
Perhaps the gaming industry will have to figure out how to do more with less, just like everyone else.

If you ran things, they would. Budgets would plummet as AAA games went for $10 and indie game sold for $0.99. When budgets fall, layoffs happen and quality goes with it.

Julio, what limits how many games you buy? Is it money, or is it actual time to play?

I find it interesting that there is a double standard here.

Companies are allowed to outsource work to low cost countries such as China and India. Yet for some reason the German court sees it as illegal for me to buy products from certain lower cost countries.

I don't care about giving the Russians etc. a price break on their videogames. Perhaps the gaming industry will have to figure out how to do more with less, just like everyone else.

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:47:

Now, I get that games aren't life-and-death, nor are they a limited resource, but the underlying principles are the same.

With the exception of the obvious life or death nature of pharmaceuticals, I think it's even worse for games because we're talking about digital codes here. There's no need to deal with a shady middle-man. You can easily find out who is reputable and who isn't, and then your code provides you with the exact same product from the exact same source as the higher priced non-grey-market.

So if you don't make a meaningful effort to separate regions based on pricing, then you cannot afford to give any region a price break. You simply have to charge them the same, or pull out of the region and let the bootleg pirated copies run the market.

Either way it's silly for anyone in a wealthy country to bitch about it, because no matter how it plays out in the long run, there is so scenario in which they standardize pricing to the price offered in impoverished countries.

If anything, the loss of those markets due to the inability to price things lower would necessitate the wealthy markets RAISING prices to cover the difference.

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:39:
of

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:29:

Cutter wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:25:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

No, they should be able to charge what they want where they want. Similarly, consumers should have the right to shop around for better prices where ever they please too. If I feel I can make more money in one place than another I'll charge what the market will bear. However, I won't begrudge the consumer going somewhere else or buying a cheaper product. Regional pricing and resales are only a problem with bullshit like this saying you can't buy other places and/or resell.

Why would anyone ever buy from their locale if they can just as easily buy from a Russian ecommerce storefront?

That's right. The only way this works is if the people in one region pay their regional price. If everyone can buy from the Russian market then they have to charge the Russian market the same price. This effectively kills the Russian market and they may as well not even sell games there. Of course this sounds good to selfish citizens of wealthy countries, but its bad for the publisher and bad for the gamers in less wealthy countries.

I had a very, very, very wealthy friend.
His family was in Europe and had its hands in a few industries. One of those industries was pharmaceuticals. They didn't make pharmaceuticals, mind you. Instead, they bought pharmaceuticals from a poorer European country (think Albania), opened the packaging, put it in new packaging, and sold it in a wealthier European country (think France.) This kind of outraged me. They literally just bought low and sold high while adding absolutely nothing to the value chain. It was easy profit.
He was taken aback at my anger, and told me that it was ok, the government only allowed 15% of the market to be this kind of pharmaceuticals. Which sounds fine, but why did they allow it at all? Easy answer - the government officials in charge of this were frequent attendees at parties at the family mansion.

Drugs tend to be the single most common grey market item. There are huge issues with pharma, but in general drugs cost huge amounts of money to develop, but are needed everywhere. So countries in Africa tend to get them for free or close to it, because no one has money to pay. Either they get the drugs, or they die. Does this mean the drugs should be free in the US? Of course not (but, again, let's remove the part of the argument around US pricing and around health care coverage, those are not pertinent to this specific piece of the discussion.)

But then there's Cutter's argument, that consumers should be able to shop around. Great. This happens to some extent with the pharmaceuticals in Africa. Rather than going to the poor, much of it is stolen by bandits and sold on the black market. That way people in wealthier countries can get much cheaper drugs.
Greeeeeat.


Now, I get that games aren't life-and-death, nor are they a limited resource, but the underlying principles are the same.

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:29:

Cutter wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:25:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

No, they should be able to charge what they want where they want. Similarly, consumers should have the right to shop around for better prices where ever they please too. If I feel I can make more money in one place than another I'll charge what the market will bear. However, I won't begrudge the consumer going somewhere else or buying a cheaper product. Regional pricing and resales are only a problem with bullshit like this saying you can't buy other places and/or resell.

Why would anyone ever buy from their locale if they can just as easily buy from a Russian ecommerce storefront?

That's right. The only way this works is if the people in one region pay their regional price. If everyone can buy from the Russian market then they have to charge the Russian market the same price. This effectively kills the Russian market and they may as well not even sell games there. Of course this sounds good to selfish citizens of wealthy countries, but its bad for the publisher and bad for the gamers in less wealthy countries.

This comment was edited on Oct 6, 2014, 17:14.

Beamer wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:29:

Cutter wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:25:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

No, they should be able to charge what they want where they want. Similarly, consumers should have the right to shop around for better prices where ever they please too. If I feel I can make more money in one place than another I'll charge what the market will bear. However, I won't begrudge the consumer going somewhere else or buying a cheaper product. Regional pricing and resales are only a problem with bullshit like this saying you can't buy other places and/or resell.

Why would anyone ever buy from their locale if they can just as easily buy from a Russian ecommerce storefront?

Uh, we can, and we do I have bought exactly ZERO games on the actual steam store in the past 5 years and saved about 500 euros...

Cutter wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 16:25:

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

No, they should be able to charge what they want where they want. Similarly, consumers should have the right to shop around for better prices where ever they please too. If I feel I can make more money in one place than another I'll charge what the market will bear. However, I won't begrudge the consumer going somewhere else or buying a cheaper product. Regional pricing and resales are only a problem with bullshit like this saying you can't buy other places and/or resell.

Why would anyone ever buy from their locale if they can just as easily buy from a Russian ecommerce storefront?

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

No, they should be able to charge what they want where they want. Similarly, consumers should have the right to shop around for better prices where ever they please too. If I feel I can make more money in one place than another I'll charge what the market will bear. However, I won't begrudge the consumer going somewhere else or buying a cheaper product. Regional pricing and resales are only a problem with bullshit like this saying you can't buy other places and/or resell.

Even within a country like the US, flat doesn't equal fair if you're talking taxes. Yeah, I went there.

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

Unfair to whom?

If I'm buying a game for $50, and someone in India is buying a game for $15, there's a good chance I'm still spending less of my disposable income on games than he is.

So even with a large price disparity, I'm still the one getting the better deal. How am I being treated unfairly?

Julio wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 14:48:

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.

Says the guy living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

NKD wrote on Oct 6, 2014, 13:54:
Flat pricing is not fair pricing, by definition.

Interesting - to me charging each consumer the same price for the same product is fair. To do otherwise is unfair.