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Comment by Idiot_in_Vain | Hacker News Reader

People vote with their wallets. If they buy stuff that's cloud and subscription based, that's the world we're going to live in tomorrow. Big corporations are of course very happy to proceed - it gives them a lot of power, control and higher profits (e.g. Adobe has drastically increased their sales since moving their programms to a subscirption model).

And IMHO it's a done deal. Almost no one nowadays listens to MP3s, rather than Spitify or Apple Music. Few people buy or download movies, rathen than subscribing to Netflix and other streaming services. Most people are accepting the requirement that they need an online account to use an iPhone, Chromebook or a Windows PC.

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I think we vote when we vote. The relative prices of true ownership and subscriptions aren’t random: they’re set by companies trying to shape a market where they can extract recurring revenue. Normal cash-constrained people are going to do what’s individually rational; it’s not reasonable to expect most people to pay a premium in the hope that it might actualize the market we’d prefer.

If we want a different slate of choices we should use the collective power we have to make it happen. ‘People vote with their wallets’ is just a way for self-interested companies to shift the blame.

> it’s not reasonable to expect most people to pay a premium in the hope that it might actualize the market we’d prefer

Nobody is saying that, though. Time is money, and if your printer is bricking itself because you forgot to update your credit card information, that will be wasted time, and you'll remember that when it comes time to pick a printer vendor in the future.

OK, but what are you trying to say?

US is world's biggest market and home to most big tech companies. It has a two party system. Do you suggest that the majority of people will select which of the two parties to vote for, based on their stance on subsriptions? Or that it's possible to force one of the two parties to take a strong position against subscriptions?

Of course not, but that's a pretty naive view of how politics works. (Naive and cynical at the same time is a nice trick.)

On second- and third-tier issues, politicians take their cues from friendly activists and interest groups, for whatever "friendly" means to that particular elected. Think about how many politicians' reelection messages are basically bullet-points of small-bore asks delivered. Each individual item may not win many votes, exactly, but they create a general sense that the candidate is engaged and effective. And perhaps more importantly, it's hard for potential opponents to build support when the incumbent is delivering for the most engaged voters in the district. Anyways a politician needs to do something while in office; it might as well be the stuff that people they respect want.

So: you frame this issue, and how it's confluent with the broader [Democratic/Republican] outlook. You clarify the desired legislative outcome. You show some public support, which takes many fewer people than you might think, and set up some meetings. Hopefully you find a sponsor. Then repeat as necessary to get the bill introduced, voted on, and maybe even passed.

None of this is easy; it's a ton of work, and by no means guaranteed of success. It's especially difficult in today's US where so much gets bottled up behind partisan showboating. But it also happens all the time. See the traction the right-to-repair movement is getting.

As this point, you're no longer voting, but engaging in activist effort to make a change.

Really it's the same for "voting with your wallet" - to actually vote with your wallet, you need to start a competing company that offers the service that you want.

If we’re just doing literary criticism, sure, fair enough.

In actual practice, as here, ‘vote with your wallet’ stands in for “people are choosing this, nothing to be done.” And ‘voting’ stands for collective action to change the choices on offer.

But sure, starting a company’s great too. Though with concentrated markets and high barriers to entry, that won’t always be feasible: I wouldn’t want to start a printer company, and that’s probably not the worst case.

>Do you suggest that the majority of people will select which of the two parties to vote for, based on their stance on subsriptions?

Of course not. Culture war bullshit will keep them distracted.

The problem with these services is that they're not portable and you don't realize it until it is too late. For example, there is this service called "Vudu" in the US that lets you purchase movies that get added to your 'library' or if you have the physical disc, keep a copy in your 'library.' Then you take a job out of the US and find you can't even access the service. So, buried deep in the ToS, you discover that you agreed to lose access if you leave the US. Meanwhile, you thought you were saving a few boxes worth of shipping by leaving the physical disks in the US.

Same with Apple. At the time we moved, we had a few movies in our library that wouldn't transfer to the new region. We had to go "buy" them again (at which point it would realize you already owned it and charge zero currency). FWIW, Apple has since fixed this and when you change regions, your purchases come over (mostly) without any issues.

If we could fix the region shenanigans, all of this would be fine IMHO. At least when it comes to digital content.

> People vote with their wallets.

People just don't want to vote with their wallets. Voting with your wallet isn't sustainable when the options you have to pick from are what's on the market. What's on the market will never be what you want to vote for; you want to vote for change.

-Emily

Of course they do. They can buy a Blu-Ray disk of a movie they want to watch (and potentially store a copy on a home NAS) or buy a Netflix subscription. Can buy a digital recording of a song, or a Spotify subsription.

> They can buy a Blu-Ray disk of a movie they want to watch

No, they can't. A lot of new releases never leave streaming services.

You still need a Netflix subscription to obtain some of the DVDs for their "netflix originals". They do still ship DVDs, but they aren't available to buy separately, you need the streaming subscription to access them.

Some "netflix originals" have DVDs sold outside of Netflix (i.e. on Amazon), but not all; you need to order DVDs directly from Netflix as part of their DVD service, I believe. (If they are even available at all.)

> Can buy a digital recording of a song, or a Spotify subsription

No, they still can't. A lot of indie artists release on Spotify but never make physical media of any kind. You can't buy songs DRM-free from Spotify.

The answer is "well don't listen to that song then" but this kind of voting is really dumb and people do not like to do this. They'll suck it up and throw money even if they hate it with their entire being. Because society as a whole has been conditioned to do this, unfortunately, and no matter how hard you try to start a revolution, this is a fact of life and you cannot avoid it.

Tell me: when what you want is no longer on the market at all, how do you vote for it? With your wallet? Do you just not buy its replacement? Nobody will care. Unless you manage to start a revolution all at once, you not buying something will be statistically insignificant.

-Emily

>> Can buy a digital recording of a song, or a Spotify subsription

> No, they still can't. A lot of indie artists release on Spotify but never make physical media of any kind.

You're contrasting spotify with physical media, but responding to a remark that didn't say physical media. Are you aware that digital downloads of music have been DRM-free from iTunes and Amazon for many years now? Physical media is irrelevant.

I'm sure you might respond by saying that some artists are spotify-exclusives (I wouldn't listen to them on principle, but you do you). But the way you contrasted spotify with physical media specifically makes me think you might not be aware that DRM-free digital music downloads have been the norm since the late-00s (about the last time I ever bought a CD!)

Sorry, I was contrasting with physical media because their first example was indeed contrasting with physical media. My point still stands. It doesn't have to be physical media, Spotify does not offer DRM-free downloads and some artists are indeed Spotify-exclusive.

I am not blind to the existence of DRM-free music downloads, no.

-Emily

To be somewhat glib, let me coin "lazulicurio's law":

The only way to have the option to have your preferences met in a large and mature enough market is to be completely price insensitive.

Oh, I am bookmarking this.

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