131–140 of 184 posts
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> There should be fair reward for positive contributions to society. That's hand waving. Specify how you propose to achieve this.
That depends on how the person wishes to be rewarded (within reason) hence my previous comment about how "value" differs per person.
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creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media". Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced?
>I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media". All the media I consume nowdays is free, news, learning resources, youtube vids etc. Apart from going to cinema (but even that started to suck), and music from local bands that I pay for to support the artist. So nope, I don't want any media. >Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced…
Sorry, but this post is based on a false notion that intellectual property is a beneficial crutch propping up only corporations and piggybacks on the idea that destruction of entrenched interests is always regenerative. That second point is likely so - but the battle isn't about finding new corporate captains to pay creative individuals - it's about how not to pay creative individuals. I find the irony very sad that…
When corporations conduct their business by lobbying for their business model to be legally protected, trying to compete with them in the market is bringing a knife to a gunfight.
But in my conception of copyright reform there is a separation of copyright ownership law vs. legal protection of instances of when that copyright is monetized. The weakness in current copyright law isn't that it exists at all, it's that rights that properly benefit the individual transfer wholesale to the entity able to bring the idea to market. This needn't be the case. And a fix has beautiful consequences that align well with the major needs of the players involved. Though it would take agreement between both public, corporations, and government alike, the prime mover for such a parallel opt-in copyright system would be the individual themselves - which means such a system is both incremental and possible.
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Arguing against money as a unit of value seems utterly silly to me. The monetary value of "discretionary time" is the amount of money you could have made if you did something else instead.
I have to disagree with you. The price of something is a function of supply and demand; monetary value is determined through price discovery in a market. But not all things are traded, nor are supply and demand perfectly elastic. You will get distorted prices for things through lack of markets and market inefficiencies. More specifically, you can't always do something else revenue-generating instead, and nor would yo…
Obviously, you can't be doing something revenue generating all the time. But for determining the value, that's the way it's done.
When you choose to hang out with your kids, you choose that over everything else you could have done. One of the things you could have done is earn money. You decided to give that up, so the monetary cost of doing what you did instead is the money you could have earned but didn't.
The market value of your time is, assuming you have a job or charge a consulting fee or whatever, is already determined.
It's always curious when someone rails about a big government and its encroachment on freedom. Then in the same statement, talks about the use of big government to target specific companies to damage them instead. As though you can really have your cake and eat it too when it comes to a big government. Big enough to break up AT&T, regulate IBM and Intel and Microsoft - big enough to take your freedom, silence your sp…
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>I read your words, but all I hear you saying is "I want free media". All the media I consume nowdays is free, news, learning resources, youtube vids etc. Apart from going to cinema (but even that started to suck), and music from local bands that I pay for to support the artist. So nope, I don't want any media. >Do you fundamentally disbelieve in the concept of paying someone for the use/enjoyment of IP they produced…
Yeah, as an independent, 'starving' artist myself, I take exception to all this happy talk about making information free. It's already hard enough to make a living off of music, or any art, and I'm no fan of the monopolies, but it's incredibly obnoxious when I hear all this stuff about just give all of your work away for free with no path to eventual prosperity, and how "It's the producers problem, why don't they mak…
Dude, sell tickets to shows, sell merch at shows, don't perform unless paid before hand.
If all else fails, consider that maybe you don't have a product worth buying, and then improve or leave.
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I have to disagree with you. The price of something is a function of supply and demand; monetary value is determined through price discovery in a market. But not all things are traded, nor are supply and demand perfectly elastic. You will get distorted prices for things through lack of markets and market inefficiencies. More specifically, you can't always do something else revenue-generating instead, and nor would yo…
You're kind of missing the point. Obviously, you can't be doing something revenue generating all the time. But for determining the value, that's the way it's done. When you choose to hang out with your kids, you choose that over everything else you could have done. One of the things you could have done is earn money. You decided to give that up, so the monetary cost of doing what you did instead is the money you coul…
If there is no price level at which a transaction will take place because the supply side values the utility of the commodity higher than any amount of money the demand side offers, then you cannot price it in terms of money.
What's the value of the Mona Lisa? You can't just go off and find some other painting(s), look at those prices, and come up with a number. The only way you can discover its market price is by testing the market: i.e. putting it up for sale and inviting bids.
A person's time is not substitutable; one hour in the morning is not equivalent to one hour in the middle of the night; and 24 hours of it every day is not equivalent to 24 times the price of 1 hour of it. It's not fungible. This limits your ability to put a monetary price on it.
>> ... recall playing with punch cards in the 1960s ... And I recall still using/seeing them in the early 1980s here in UK! They were still heavily used at that time in the Market Research industry for recording data entry (of surveys). In fact the term punching is still used in the industry to this day in reference to data entry.
They still are used, but just in a digital form. We interface with some unnamed software that requires you to recode data into 80 columns, 12 possible values per word (encoded as 12 usable bits within 2 8-bit bytes -- and only one bit can be set per word). That turns some fixed-width layout into 80-column groups, with e.g. the requirement that the last 2 columns contain the card number, and the first 4 some record ID…
This continues to remain unchanged by time because the leading Market Research tool [1] still prefers to use data with 80 columns, 12 multiple values per col (0-9, & and -) with optional multi cards (card numbers can be in any columns and any length).
[1] Software is called Quantum. Originally developed in the 1970s !
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At a concrete, legal level, suppose that I as a software developer wish to be paid in money for my time working on software , and not on client projects, what do you propose? And if I write books? What is the legal framework you are proposing that would ensure that I would be paid a "fair" price for my work? What if my work is brilliant and millions love it? What if it's shit, and no one would pay me a dime for it? W…
Remove money from the picture entirely and ask yourself what you'd like to recieve in exchange for your work. If there is not a "fair value" then it probably shouldn't be being done. If it's for personal interest, don't expect a fair value for it. People expect and somehow manage to get money at the moment for shit which is the problem. When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and othe…
Yeah no. We want money so that we have the fluidity of choosing a candy bar one day and a vacation another. Besides, you can't have someone offer you fractions of a vacation for your work. Is it truly that difficult to see where barter systems fail?
Besides, you are putting too much faith in the "fair value" idea. First off, when you want something and you barter with someone, a common technique is to disparage the quality of the item you desire. Why? To convince someone else that it isn't worth as much, that a "fair value" is less than that. Then, take the example of a mom-and-pop shop making jams and jellies. They probably have a lot of pride in their work and the price reflects their feelings of craftsmanship. They say, "Look at how good it is! How fresh, how pure!" -- they are trying to convince you that it is worth more than you initially appraised it at.
It's a conflict of interest -- it is in the best interest of the consumer to pay as low as he can, and it is in the best interest of the producer to get as much as he can. One seeks to minimize losses, the other, maximize profits.
Ever heard of donation-based bagel shops? You pay "what you think it is worth". Some people drop $5, others drop $0.01 because they want food and don't really want to pay for it. Even being glared at (social pressure) isn't enough to stop them.
The moral of the story is that people suck and asking them to "be fair" is a hilariously misguided way of getting revenue.
"When you put something on the free market, you are opening it to opinion and other people deciding the value. Think carefully first."
Yes, they can decide on a value, and so can the producer. If the values match or can be negotiated, you have an exchange. If they don't, then there is no exchange. Eco 101?