Though, there’s a part of me thinking that the basic idea of creating artificial scarcity for profit is hard to separate from scamminess. It’s giving De Beers.

▲ toenail a day ago | parent [-]

The entertainment industry tried for decades to achieve artificial scarcity for profit. All scammers?

▲ bunderbunder a day ago | parent | next [-]

I do think there’s a difference between charging a price and creating artificial scarcity.

This isn’t to say that the entertainment industry hasn’t pulled some awful shenanigans. But they’re generally willing to sell to as many people as are willing to pay the price they set. For the most part they haven’t tried to place hard limits on how many total people are allowed to watch a movie and control it with some sort of limited edition resellable token. That was an innovation of the NFT folks.

	▲	its-summertime 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Disney Vault comes to mind instantly. There was also limited periods for buying deluxe/collectors' editions of both movies and games. (Releasing collectors' editions of an IP before the very first episode/movie/game/etc is a whole another issue just by itself.)

▲ datsci_est_2015 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The […] tried to achieve artificial scarcity for profit. All scammers?

Yeah, I don’t really see a difference between scamming and certain types of rent seeking. So many things could fit in the blank there, not just the entertainment industry.

If:

  - you’re not creating value
  - you’re exploiting the value someone else has created
  - you’re engaging in anticompetitive, anticonsumer behavior
  - etc.

You’re rent seeking and the only reason we’re don’t use the word “scammer” is because the concentration of wealth of the western world is built on rent seeking behavior.

▲ abathologist a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All the ones trying to do that, yes.

▲ inigyou a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What are you talking about - the entertainment industry is the most famous scam industry ever, giving the most famous artists just enough money to keep them dependent and pocketing 90% of it themselves.

▲

toenail a day ago | parent [-]

Ah yes, independent computer game producers adding copy protection were scammers.

	▲	inigyou a day ago \| parent [-]
		Do those represent more than a negligible share of the entertainment industry?

▲ scotty79 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes. Far worse than crypto, because they manufacture scarcity of access to human culture.