Disney tried to force the case into arbitration by citing the agreement on the widower’s Disney Plus trial account.
Disney has now agreed that a wrongful death lawsuit should be decided in court following backlash for initially arguing the case belonged in arbitration because the grieving widower had once signed up for a Disney Plus trial.
“With such unique circumstances as the ones in this case, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss,” chairman of Disney experiences Josh D’Amaro said in a statement to The Verge. “As such, we’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court.”
It’s not capitalism. It’s rent-seeking, which is what came before capitalism. The “Free Market” that Adam Smith talked about wasn’t a market free from regulations, it was a market free from economic rents, free from monopolies, etc. The big problems we’re seeing now aren’t because we have too much capitalism, it’s because the capitalism we have is shifting more towards rent-seeking, monopolies, artificial scarcity, etc. It’s basically feudalism. In a proper capitalist system you have competition. That’s the “free market”. If someone doesn’t like the decisions a business is making, they’ll switch to another one.
Companies can only get away with the kinds of things Disney tries when they don’t have to worry about competition. In other words, it’s no longer a capitalist system, it’s a rent-seeking business. Disney is built around its intellectual property, and IP is nothing but rent-seeking. Nobody can compete with Disney and make a better Star Wars movie because Disney owns the rights to anything Star Wars related.