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18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

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Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#51

Post by cortesoft »

ksk wrote: post #20

Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. "Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist. Personally, I think that the goal should be to get paid while you work on open source. But, I know that its not an option for everyone. >I use open source technolo…

So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#52

Post by cortesoft »

yellowstuff wrote: post #49
kbenson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed. I'm sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it's a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn't always about monetary co…

Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work. The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. If volunteers do just enough free programming to drive professionals out of the market, it's possible the result will be that less work gets done. I don't think soup kitchens have the same risk.

Soup kitchens have the exact same risk. If those soup kitchens cook too much, they will drive restaurants out of business. Luckily, for both soup kitchens and programmers, this will never happen. There is more programming work to be done than programmers, and the markets aren't the same.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

ksk wrote: post #38
brownbat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't want the money you're willing to pay You could run this same critique against any bid after the first bid, because it's lower than the amount they were willing to pay. The consequence of your argument is that all auctions are immoral. In reality, prices are negotiated between a field of willing suppliers and purchasers. There will almost always be some "producer surplus," some amount producers get beyond thei…

No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.

> No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.

No, its not. "I can do it for free" is an instance of "I can do it cheaper". Its quite possible for someone to have a non-negative (zero or positive) net utility from an act which gives someone else a net positive utility, so that the "price" they are willing to charge for that task is zero or even negative (that is, they are willing to pay for the opportunity.) That's no different than the variation in utilities between suppliers with a net negative utility who are willing to do the task for a variety of positive payments.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#54

Post by nogoodnamesleft »

ksk wrote: post #20

Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. "Oh, I already got paid elsewhere, but let me work for free and outbid others who are doing this as their primary job" is the unstated context and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist. Personally, I think that the goal should be to get paid while you work on open source. But, I know that its not an option for everyone. >I use open source technolo…

Calling other people "smug" and "elitist". Justify it by believing you are some sort of protector of the rest of us. Opening our eyes to our unethical behavior, and how we're demeaning and stealing bread from the mouths of others.

Maybe our economics are unethical. I mean we have right here evidence that people can be motivated by things other than money. But yeah we have to bow our heads at the pulpit of "sound economics".

Let's start excluding those who want to contribute in a different way because it undermines the religion. Maybe we should burn them at the stake?

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#55

Post by patsplat »

Lower project bids reduce the level of commitment on the part of both the client and contractor. With only $1 at risk, the amount of leverage the client can exert over the work product is minimal.

Volunteering is not the same relationship as contracting, and carries different kinds of project risk for the client.

Judging bids using price as the sole basis is easy, and poor procurement.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#56

Post by caseysoftware »

yellowstuff wrote: post #49
kbenson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed. I'm sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it's a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn't always about monetary co…

Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work. The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. If volunteers do just enough free programming to drive professionals out of the market, it's possible the result will be that less work gets done. I don't think soup kitchens have the same risk.

This was the common argument 10 years ago as open source CMSes - primarily WordPress and Drupal - started becoming more common. That eventually web developers would be entirely replaced by people who just configure plugins/modules.

As we've seen, software development has stagnated and almost gone away in the ten years since.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#57

Post by kbenson »

ksk wrote: post #43
kbenson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, it is not the same thing at all. People volunteer for organizations because the organizations DO NOT have the resources to pay them because all their money goes into buying goods and what not. The organization does have enough money to pay some of them, but the savings from people volunteering goes to other resources, and since people align with the goal of the organization, they are fine with that. This is the…

>The organization does have enough money to pay some of them, but the savings from people volunteering goes to other resources, and since people align with the goal of the organization, they are fine with that. You are comparing two very different things. The material costs of feeding 100 people would probably equal the labor costs of one worker for one day. Nobody is going to make the labor compromise when the quest…

> The material costs of feeding 100 people would probably equal the labor costs of one worker for one day. Nobody is going to make the labor compromise when the question is "Do I feed 10 people or 100 people".

But that's not the actual decision that needs to be made. It's more like do I feed no people because there's nobody to distribute the food that will work for free, or do I pay some people some small amount and feed some people. I guarantee decisions like that get made at all levels of nonprofits all the time, from entry level positions to directors. It is a market, and just because much of the time supply far outstrips demand, to the point that there is no monetary compensation (but there is theoretically other compensation), doesn't mean that always hold true at all times and in all locations.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#58

Post by nogoodnamesleft »

yellowstuff wrote: post #49
kbenson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it feels a tad bit smug and elitist Saying that about someone who wants to help out so essentially volunteers their time to help a government project, which in essence means it helps everyone, seems a bit entitled and ill-informed. I'm sure many people want to get paid to work on open source, but it's a free market, and people will bid what they think a project is worth, and worth isn't always about monetary co…

Any form of volunteering replaces some amount of paid work. The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis. If volunteers do just enough free programming to drive professionals out of the market, it's possible the result will be that less work gets done. I don't think soup kitchens have the same risk.

> The pros and cons need to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Utilitarianism? Watch it quickly spiral into a shit show.

These same concerns and arguments are nothing new. People have been bemoaning the evils of open-source and it's socialist ways as unethical and selfish for years. And look how the software market still flourished. In many cases, directly off the backs of unpaid developers.

There's a good chance we're beyond a tipping point of ever again having enough work for the masses anyway. Look how many able-bodied folks the Feds hide under disability to keep the unemployment numbers low. And computing jobs will continue to vanish as software advances. You gonna tell a software company they can't launch their accounting AI because of CPA job losses? You going to stop IBM from improving Watson because it might cost us some Javascriptkiddie jobs (don't need as many web pages if Watson can do my work just by talking to it, or just having a brain-wave interface)?

Humanity will shrug and do what they did when cars replaced horse and buggy: Carry on.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#59

Post by kedean »

Jtsummers wrote: post #50
cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Working for free is a luxury for the people not struggling to ends meet. Go back to your gulch, John Galt. Just because someone chooses to be altruistic does not mean you have to crap all over their altruism.

You're basically name-calling, which is unproductive. While I'm not in agreement with OP, some levels and methods of altruism/volunteerism can end up being counterproductive. A certain level of free to a region is useful. Above that, or for too long, and you end up harming local farming and manufacturing, to the point where they may also depend on the free goods. I'm lacking specific articles and lines of research, b…

You may be thinking of this example: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00...

TLDR; sending a surplus of tshirts to Africa did nothing but crash local textile industries by introducing a surplus of existing, cheap product. Guy wanted to do good, didn't think about the consequences, and screwed up.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#60

Post by detaro »

ksk wrote: post #38
brownbat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't want the money you're willing to pay You could run this same critique against any bid after the first bid, because it's lower than the amount they were willing to pay. The consequence of your argument is that all auctions are immoral. In reality, prices are negotiated between a field of willing suppliers and purchasers. There will almost always be some "producer surplus," some amount producers get beyond thei…

No, you could not. I can do it cheaper is distinct from I can do it for free.

Where is the line between "cheaper" and "free"?

Minimum wage might be a useful data point, but tied to not predictable work time.

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