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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3985 thread views

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?

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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.

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