This is a little tricky because one can argue that calling for a boycott is a market mechanism. However, I disagree. The true market mechanism is "if the beliefs of their employees leads them to make a worse product, you won't buy as much of it, and their profits will suffer." That mechanism has feedback based on the actual harmful effect. The mechanism of "I feel attacked by the personal beliefs of their employees, so I want to attack back by boycotting them even when they make products I want to buy" has feedback based on a percieved vague future effect that is almost inevitably going to be grossly exaggerated by the fear state of feeling persecuted.
This is the mentality of the honorable, and perpetual loser, because everyone else takes advantage of him.
I assume Tor still makes some money on older, better books, and although the quality of their new stuff most certainly has suffered, it has coincided with this larger progressive campaign in society- especially in education. As a result, although Tor is certainly losing market share, it still has more market share than it should right now. How? Before the cultural Marxist campaigns there had to be a simulacrum of reality in the novel in order for the reader to suspend disbelief. Now new readers often don't know where that bar is, especially when the plot line is something a progressive wants to believe, because many of these nonsensical ideas about reality have been taught as reality to children.
Indeed, there are many on the internet, who are progressively oriented, apparently more interested in what happens in entertainment than what happens in real life. This is one side effect of the extractive corporate culture that is ultimately responsible for a lot of this nonsense, since so many of us have empty lives of meaningless work to be followed by entertainment- which should probably be called entrainment.
But here is another economic premise: The division of labor.
Tor is in direct violation of this premise, and I notice this because I happen to be able to read faster than most humans, and I can edit. I decided, when I started this blog, not to spend to much time on editing- otherwise blogging would be a very large time sink.
Tor, and most mainstream publishing, is discriminatory against hiring people like me, and this case is much more obvious, because one would assume they would be looking for people like me if they- and the economy at large- were attempting to employ appropriate division of labor.
I think the progressives like to claim racism or sexism when we talk about division of labor, so that they can just dismiss it, but the accidents- as it were- as to why these misallocations occur are nowhere near as important as the essence. The essential aspect of this is not progressivism, but rent-seeking; i.e. people, often white, with a strong personal incentive to avoid internal competition within these organizations. In these cases, progressivism provides a moral credence, as bewildering as it is to those of us with actual morals, to the machinations of those attempting to insulate themselves and their positions from competition.
A boycott is more than fair. So are rather draconian rules about certain political behaviors in a free society. They may appear unfair and unprincipled, but until and unless a truly principled man or persons achieve power and are able to maintain it, we will continue to see this destruction. Tor itself will fall, regardless of the boycott precisely because people within it chose the well-known bureaucratic path with this veneer of progressivism on top, rather than staying true to principles.
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