Yeah, the first Mac I bought I only ever bought Snow Leopard as an upgrade, skipped other versions and then upgraded to Mountain Lion or whatever was the first free version. That’s basically 30ish spent over the entire almost 20 years I’ve been using Macs on actual software.

The comic is kind of dumb because it’s Microsoft who’ve typically made tons of money on software licenses, everyone knows that Apple makes their money on hardware.

It wasn’t updated every year. Major paid versions came out every 2 years or so. They became free when they started updating major versions annually

100%

Heh I was just going to block the user myself for the same reason but I thought I’d check the comments to see if anyone had any better ideas!

I buy CDs and rip them into lossless myself unless it’s not available and then I’ll sail

There is no problem… in theory. You can show mathematically that profit maximisation and utility maximisation can distribute goods effectively. In theory, on paper, where everyone follows the rules and so on. That’s true with any system really.

Often, when you solve these models in economics, you implicitly make the assumption of ‘benevolent dictator’. You need someone outside the system that has nothing to gain by interfering in the system, that can move stuff around at will, that regulates every single agent/firm to behave in ways only permitted by the system etc.

The problem is humans are human. None of these things work if someone decides to not play by the rules. People can blame the system sure, but if the system isn’t even being employed properly in the first place, I think it’s the wrong argument to be having. It’s a bit like ignoring or modifying half the rules of a board game and then saying the game is broken because it leads to weird outcomes.

The problem is that in theory the workers also are supposed to own the factories and get a slice of the profits. This is what shares are for. Unfortunately, in practice, a larger and larger chunk of people seem to be getting excluded from that bit.