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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 27, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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realtor

The word "realtor" is a trademark of a specific organization. In order to avoid encouraging that organization's market dominance, one should instead say "real-estate agent".

Wait, you’re fighting their market dominance by…telling people that they exist and are important?

That seems counterproductive. You should be using the term; if it loses its distinctive character, they lose the legal protection of the trademark.

Imagine a graph with the linguistic dominance of "realtor" vs. "real-estate agent" on the x axis and the enhancement of the market dominance of Realtors vs. real-estate agents (not the market dominance itself) on the y axis.

When x = 0, Realtors are just an eccentric group of real-estate agents that insist on using their trademarked name even though everybody just calls them real-estate agents. y = 0, or even a negative number because people are annoyed by their behavior.

When x = 0.75, most people incorrectly call real-estate agents realtors. The typical person who wants to sell a house will type "realtor" into Google and will hire a Realtor rather than a non-Realtor real-estate agent. Therefore, the market dominance of the Realtors is enhanced by the linguistic situation: y = 0.75.

When x = 1, as you say, the trademark becomes genericized by a court ruling. It now is legitimate for all real-estate agents to call themselves realtors, the official Realtors no longer get extra traffic funneled to them by Google, and y = 0.

If, IRL, x = 0.5, then I think pushing it down to 0.25 is more palatable then pushing it up to 0.75 and hoping that it overshoots to 1.

Y=0.8 currently

Hmm. You make a good point.