this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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You are describing supply and demand. Not much more to it than that. Demand for ad free services is greater than demand from advertisers. What's your point?
You're free to be indignant about the ad industry and other people's willingness to pay for services at this or that price point but at least call a spade a spade.
I have premium for YouTube Music, and because they have certain music I can't get elsewhere, so I get a better YouTube experience and a music streaming service for about the same price I'd pay for just Spotify. I'm satisfied with my purchase and the value I get from it.
Except American medication prices a) aren't supply and demand; they involve manufactured scarcity among other serious problems and b) are a matter of life and death in many cases; they deal with necessities
There are many things that should not be capitalist: education, healthcare, prisons, to name just a few
The pricing of funny Internet videos et al is not one of those things, and it's frankly inappropriate to make that comparison here. You think the ethics of lifesaving medication and YouTube videos are comparable? Gimme a break
There is a difference between monopolies and anti-trust. It is not, nor should it be, illegal to be the only serious contender in a given category.
If I make widgets for arcade machines so well that I drive all the other arcade machine widget makers out of business, that's normal commerce.
Antitrust is when I gain and maintain that advantage through specific practices detailed in the legal code
Monopolies are only broken up when it is of grave public interest to do so. There are industries I believe have monopoly/duopoly problems and should be broken up. "Hosting videos on the Internet" is not one of them.
Again, trying to say "pharmaceuticals shouldn't be an oligarchy/monopoly, which is proof that nothing should be" is not good logic
You should look into the history and breakup of the Bell telephone company for context on when a monopoly is broken up and why
How are you defining "should be" anyway? Your personal opinion? What profit margins should be considered okay and for which products or services?
You need to pick which things are important enough to forcibly break up, and everything after that is fair game, regardless of what you think is healthy for the market. Otherwise you're just talking about "I don't like the leadership of that company, they're bad people" at which point your problem is about, like, specific people's ethics.
I hate that those people succeed, and there are things I think we can do to mitigate those problems, but "Google bad, don't let them secure their products or help others secure theirs" ain't it homie
I'm not sure I agree yet, but I respect that. I guess my last comment is that you can't squeeze blood from a stone. You can't get businesses to voluntarily police their own greed, nor can you outlaw having best in class service providers. These are the wrong levers to pull when trying to fix the problems of wealth disparity and access to well maintained, valuable, unhindered services for everyone.