zedigalis

joined 1 day ago
[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 hours ago

100% nationalize with lots of oversight, use the fact that it owns 50% of the industry to drive prices down by establishing a profitable baseline that private ventures will have to compete with.

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Well if your part of the cancer, mourning that you've almost killed your host makes sense...

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

We should have forced them to break apart when they were bailed out(again) :/

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The article thankfully mentions what I believe is the main issue. Housing is a commodity now not a need to be filled.

Housing is now considered an investment. And investments are expected to go up in value. Since the majority of our population have adopted this stance, any policy that may lower the cost of housing gets torpedoed because a large amount of the population either owns property or thinks they will own property soon. People don't vote against their own interests.

This problem is compounded by the fact that people with land have more power, they can borrow against their assets to acquire more capital. People with more capital can lobby the government more effectively.

Of course my stance is that these people can get by with LESS money so that the people with almost NO money can survive. Convincing them of this though may prove to be nearly impossible and without their cooperation it's going to be a real uphill battle.

All this to say that until we NEED to get the cost of living under control. Immigration is necessary to keep our economy growing at the rate we'd like it to grow but it also is exasperating the cost of living crisis. It's complicated.

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

It's not fear it's just taking a bit of effort to be respectful and inclusive.

If someone gets mad because you just said women then yeah I'd agree that's a bit much but taking a bit of time to be inclusive shouldn't be something you're upset about.

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah I posted it here cause I know it's a bit of a contentious opinion. I think the outrage is really more about the consumer market as a whole and not really Nintendo themselves.

The Switch 2 just happened to be something a ton of people are looking forward to and many of those people are upset with the fact that all prices are going up while their wages are stagnant and honestly rightfully so. I think people should be using that energy to lobby for change on a huge scale to make life more affordable (UBI systems, rent controls, tax the rich, etc.) instead of blaming one company.

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

While I agree in principle (I'm not a fan of unfettered capitalism either) the fact is that people need to vote with their wallets. As the business saying goes: "things are worth what people will pay for it"

People are going to buy the switch 2, I expect they won't be able to supply enough to stock stores sufficiently on launch just like the last couple console launches. Games are going to sell and they are going to make a profit. If people want to make a statement that it's unaffordable they need to organise a large boycott or potentially a general strike to enact change in the market as a whole; which I don't see happening(sadly).

So again while I do agree that late stage capitalism and the fact that buying power is at a long time low is a huge issue. I do not think that Nintendo following the other big game consoles pricing is surprising nor on its own unethical. I find the huge uproar that they are joining PlayStation and Microsofts pricing range to be a bit much. Under our current economic structure Nintendo has a fiscal responsibility to be profitable to their shareholders, I'm sure there's a ton of pressure on them to follow market pricing.

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Exactly.

And like I get some backlash but I feel like I see memes and protest posts all over social media like this is some kind of huge betrayal by Nintendo. The general response just feels disproportionate.

 

I get it, prices of games going up sucks but games rose to about $60 (cad) during the wii era. Put that into an inflation calculator and you end up with about $90 nowadays, it's not really a price hike out of line with general inflation. The switch 2 pricing isn't out of line with AAA PS5 games either ($80 for a digital copy has already been the case for a while there).

Games are not free to make and modern games have longer dev cycles and therefore cost more to make as well.

Consoles are also typically sold at a loss with the idea that software sales will make up for the loss. Were games to remain the same price the console would likely be significantly more expensive.

I get that consumer purchasing power is down due to wages not keeping up with inflation but sadly the reality is that if making a console and games for it are unprofitable then they'll stop making them.

[–] zedigalis@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Or they can all be in on it and collude to buy once the stocks fall to their target.