Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Outside of the original trilogy on DVD (and VHS!), I don't own any Star Wars products, apparel, films, or knick-knacks. I skipped the most recent film, Solo. But since I like to follow movie trends, my various news feeds still send me articles about the latest Star Wars movies.
Rarely does anything on this pique my interest as an editor here at mises.org. But then this tweet came through, which certainly raised my eyebrows:
I won't bore you with many details but the context here is an ongoing war between so-called Social Justice Warriors and many rabid Star Wars fans. The SJWs like the recent Star Wars movies, which clearly have adopted a certain lefty tone and flair since Disney bought Lucasfilm. Because of their political leanings, these leftists tend to defend these movies no matter what, even though the new movies are rather boring and forgettable. Meanwhile, many other fans of the franchise hate the politics of the new movies and blame the ideological posturing in the films for the fact that the films are so mediocre. They claim that Lucasfilm had better start paying more attention to these more tradition-minded fans, or the franchise will fail.
So, when "Geek Girl Diva" chimes in to say that people who watch the movies aren't really customers, what she's trying to say is people who don't like the movies should just shut up and accept whatever Lucasfilm wants to dish out.
Now, I don't know who "Geek Girl Diva" is, but economics is apparently not her strong suit. Obviously, a person who buys a ticket to a movie is indeed a customer of the company that created the movie. Tickets sold at theaters are an important source of revenue for movie production companies, and every ticket purchase is a voluntary exchange between the people who made the movie, and the person watching the movie. Certainly, other parties are involved also, such as the theater owners. But the people who made the movie are clearly part of the exchange.
Only in a case where a person bought a movie ticket at a theater — and was completely indifferent to which movie he or she ended up seeing there — would that person in a sense not be a customer of the movie-production company. In that case, the customer would be buying a ticket only to have the general experience of being at a movie theater. Any movie would suffice.
But of course, this never happens since anyone who buys a ticket has to chose which movie to watch. As soon as he or she makes that decision — Bam! He or she has become a customer of the people who made that movie.
So, the first part of Geek Girl Diva's "argument" fails utterly.
Consumer Sovereignty vs. Producer Sovereignty
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