Forum - View topic

INTEREST: Gantz Creator Urges Fans to Buy Manga New, Not Used

CandisWhite wrote:

My first comment

I understand that you are coming from a well meaning place, but you are casting moral aspersions on consumers, particularly lower income ones, and presenting inaccurate beliefs about the relationship between consumer choices and poverty. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong about getting four manga volumes for the price of one, buying anything used regardless of one's income bracket, living life within one's means, or making financial choices for oneself. Even your examples make no sense. There is no relationship between the price one is willing to pay for physical media versus the price they would pay to attend a concert in person. There is also no moral obligation to pay more for media because you are willing and able to afford go to a concert. And if you care so much about the ethical obligation of consumers, what are you doing at Wal-Mart, anyway? That store is notorious for mistreating its workers in general, and paying the lowest wages it can get away with, encouraging its workers to apply for government supplements like food stamps and even organizing holiday food drives for its own employees. There is a cognitive dissonance when you can claim that somebody who purchases books at a library sale (where the books are usually donated and all profits go to the library or another non-profit) is somehow morally inferior to someone who buys a brand new Blu-ray at Wal-Mart. If you care about ethics in consumerism, read up on arguments about buying mostly locally made goods from privately owned small businesses (including used book stores, thrift shops and non-profits) and getting produce from farmer's markets as opposed to chain supermarkets. There is room for ethics in consumer culture, certainly. For example, here is the Wikipedia article on Ethical Consumerism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_consumerism

I'll admit that I only skimmed it, but I didn't see anything there about how buying consumer products used is considered unethical by anybody, under any circumstances (eg, no matter "why you did it," or even who did it). If you know of any scholarly research or philosophy that suggests that it is, please share it. And if you can prove your notion that there is somehow a direct correlation between consumers choosing to spend full price on products and a reduced need for supplements, charity, or a reduction in poverty in general, please share that, too. Because I suspect that notion is total BS. There are a lot of complicated factors in our worldwide economy that is reducing the size of the middle class, increasing the amount of people who fall below the poverty line, and increasing the amount of wealth the top one percent can hoard. Individual consumers choosing to pay full price for brand new manga, especially outside of Japan, doesn't impact those factors in the least.

e.g. Dollar store products exist; They are legal: What had to happen to get those products to be so cheap? Quality of product and treatment of overseas factory workers come into question and make the purchase of those items more distasteful.

1) Not only did I cut out low-income earners, I pointed out that positive actions by people with purchasing power do affect them, for the better. More sales at companies lead to more hours, higher wages, more hires. Now, obviously, there are other factors at play, such as the cost of doing business and getting employers to do their fair share, but sales matter.

2) My example about the concert-goer was to show that people who often complain about the price of things are not complaining because they literally cannot afford the item but because they cannot afford this item ,and that one, and that one, and, etc: That's not an issue; That's life. The concert-goer was able to buy tickets that can go for hundreds of dollars apiece and that was his choice; He, now, has to accept that his budget has gone crunch and scale back until things are steady again.

Buying used is the many people would prefer since they can get the volume they like and the manga-ka will get some royalties from it.

First of all, thank you for continuing this discussion in a calm, reasoned and interested manner. I really feel like I am gaining a lot from this exchange (I mean it sincerely!)

Big chunk of comment

I hope you can better understand where I'm coming from. Sorry for TL:DR!

When many people look at the cost to buy something, product or service, they see the loss of dollars in a sale as not a big deal. What they fail to realize is that those few dollars are just from your share: Every time a purchase doesn't put in those dollars, that's a loss; The deeper the discount, the deeper the loss; The smaller the product/service profit margin, the more the losses cut; And those losses add up.

CandisWhite wrote:

When many people look at the cost to buy something, product or service, they see the loss of dollars in a sale as not a big deal. What they fail to realize is that those few dollars are just from your share: Every time a purchase doesn't put in those dollars, that's a loss; The deeper the discount, the deeper the loss; The smaller the product/service profit margin, the more the losses cut; And those losses add up.

It is most definitely not that simple. If someone bought something for $2 that they would've normally bought for $3, it's not as if that dollar disappears forever. Chances are that dollar will get used for something else. Maybe it's a similar good or even the same good, or maybe it's something completely different.

When a company or creator goes bankrupt, rarely is it because they were selling things too cheap. It's because they were doing something that few people were interested in (whether that means they created something unappealing or they never got the attention they needed), they made decisions that annoyed potential buyers, or something unrelated but catastrophic happens that instantly drives them out of business. And the people selling goods and services know that their consumers want the most bang for their buck and will price their goods and services accordingly. Well, most of the time anyway. You have stuff like Veblen goods (where demand rises with price, like luxury cars or anime on home video in Japan) and non-competitive markets (where sellers price things without concern for their neighbors because the buyers have atypical habits), but they are more an exception than the norm. You can buy things to support the people who make them, but those people more than likely know that they're not going to be profitable unless they sell those goods and services at competitive prices.