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A world where people pay for software

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Re: A world where people pay for software

#401

Post by [deleted] »

nickff wrote: post #374
smolder wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it seems crazy on its face. And I'm sure those leftists you refer to didn't have a coherent concept of how such a system would actually work . There's no way we could just replace paychecks today with rations and social credits and have a functioning system. It'd be an extreme destabilizing change to a system we built incrementally over a long time to be self reinforcing. But I also have the view that people a…

> "But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems." This is another view common to most (Marxist) communists, the belief in society's ability to cultivate the 'socialist man'.

[deleted]

Re: A world where people pay for software

#402

Post by aleph_minus_one »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #359
dbrueck wrote: post #351

A root of the problem is using economic models for physical items with digital goods and services. IMO the most sensical low level* economic model for digital things would be one where you pay a really tiny amount every time you derive value from something. A fraction of a penny each time you play a song, each time you edit an image in some software, each time you visit a website. There are a boatload of obstacles to…

Interesting to think about. However, for that to be feasible I believe the draconian "copyright forever" laws would have to have never happened. I'm against paying rent to corporations to access the work of dead people on principle. Or past say, fifty years even if they lived.

> However, for that to be feasible I believe the draconian "copyright forever" laws would have to have never happened.

This argument assumes that you are lawful, in opposite to chaotic, on the ethical axis (see https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterAlignme...).

Re: A world where people pay for software

#403

Post by travisgriggs »

thorncorona wrote: post #342
smolder wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are potentially other carrots aside from material wealth that can motivate people to do unpleasant work. Currently it takes significant pay to get people to do certain important but thankless jobs. We could thank them. A legacy is important to many people. They may enjoy an immutable commemoration of their work, if they're secure in a material sense.

This is the exact same answer every leftist I've talked to says when I ask them who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewers.

Let me analyze your sewage and garbage and sell your consumption habits to the highest bidder, and I might bite. Think of it as a "sump scription" :D

Re: A world where people pay for software

#404

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ilyt wrote: post #383
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SaaS from established firms seems to be more durable & maintained. Google is infamous for shutting down services. And the same thing regularly happens even to large companies when they get acquired by even larger companies who then shut down their existing services and try to force migrate everyone to the parent's offering. Conversely, stalwarts like Oracle and IBM will often continue providing a service indefinite…

> But many people would just keep using the original version indefinitely. Paying $800 once is a lot less than paying $150/year until you die. It also lets you choose whether you want to pay more for the new features or save money because you don't need them. The way around that was to change file format so if you're in industry using that file format (say .PSD Photoshop files), at some point you won't be able to ope…

But that was also a risk, because then companies would standardize on the old version because they didn't want to send files their business partners couldn't open. It also opened the door to a competitor because if you're going to make a compatibility-breaking change anyway...

Re: A world where people pay for software

#405

Post by JoshTriplett »

thorncorona wrote: post #342
smolder wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are potentially other carrots aside from material wealth that can motivate people to do unpleasant work. Currently it takes significant pay to get people to do certain important but thankless jobs. We could thank them. A legacy is important to many people. They may enjoy an immutable commemoration of their work, if they're secure in a material sense.

This is the exact same answer every leftist I've talked to says when I ask them who will run the garbage system, and who will clean the sewers.

The obvious answer is "pay people more".

If we had UBI, for instance, and people did not have to work in order to have basic needs (food and shelter) met, then the willingness to do unpleasant jobs like sewer cleaning will go down, and it'll be necessary to pay people more to do that work.

And the need to pay people more will then drive technological innovation that may today not be worthwhile because "just hire someone" is less expensive. And in a world with UBI, automating away unpleasant jobs becomes more of an unmitigated win.

(In case it isn't clear: I think "UBI plus a free market" is a much better system than "don't pay people but magically hope all the work gets done anyway".)

Re: A world where people pay for software

#406

Post by guidoism »

derefr wrote: post #339
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #306

Computers have an unprecedented ability to reproduce value for free. Programmers need a relatively fixed amount of resources to thrive. (The value of resources varies by location but we all need things like food, shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, etc etc) If we can find a way to make sure every person has what they need to thrive regardless of their income, programmers can open source all of their software an…

Do you think there would be very many programmers in such a world? Personally, I think that a lot of people who right now go into programming "because it's a good career", would instead do things that are equally creative but also capture other things high on the Maslow hierarchy — e.g. fame. Personally, despite enthusiastically enjoying my programming career and puzzle-oriented problem-solving more generally, I'm st…

My (honestly non-snarky) answer is: who cares?

Do we really need all of the programmers that are currently being employed? Will society collapse if there aren't 100,000 working on the next photo sharing app?

The important stuff will get done. Anything that is a luxury will get done only if someone wants to do it for themselves or if someone can convince another person to do it. Money doesn't need to disappear under a world of UBI, it's just not something that every single person on earth needs to participate in under thread of starvation and death.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#407

Post by smolder »

nickff wrote: post #374
smolder wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it seems crazy on its face. And I'm sure those leftists you refer to didn't have a coherent concept of how such a system would actually work . There's no way we could just replace paychecks today with rations and social credits and have a functioning system. It'd be an extreme destabilizing change to a system we built incrementally over a long time to be self reinforcing. But I also have the view that people a…

> "But I also have the view that people are very malleable and can conform to all sorts of social structures and belief systems." This is another view common to most (Marxist) communists, the belief in society's ability to cultivate the 'socialist man'.

Okay, so are you disputing what I said? Various disparate religions and ideologies have cultivated adherents with notable success across history -- not least among them is free-market capitalism.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#408

Post by PeterisP »

lawn wrote: post #64
nightski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it's the opposite. The incentive is to lock you in and provide as little value as possible for as much money as possible. Get you hooked, take your data hostage, and then jack up the price as much as possible while delivering little to no additional functionality. Bugs? who cares. Broken functionality? No big deal. You are locked in baby!

What exactly is the difference from paying up front? There there's even less incentives to fix bugs, fix broken functionality and god forbid new functionality.

With SAAS, if the software is barely usable but lacks competition, vendor gets paid even if they don't fix bugs or broken functionality. When paying up-front, there always is competition - your own old version; so the vendor has strong financial motivation to make improvements since the recurring "maintenance" upgrade revenue is conditional on them, unlike in SAAS.

Re: A world where people pay for software

#409

Post by guidoism »

PeterisP wrote: post #394
bee_rider wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to guess what people would work on without needing to worry about money. You might try your novel, and one of two things could happen: You find out you love it, you write a really good novel, and society wins. You try it, find out that the actual experience of writing a novel is a drag. No harm no foul, you move on and keep trying things until you find something you are really passionate about and good at,…

You can also find out that you love it despite the novels (or software or paintings or poems or whatever) not being interesting for almost anyone else or even being available to anyone, but as you don't need the money you can keep doing that (and only that) and society simply loses out on whatever you're doing currently. The key part of what people would work on without needing to worry about money is that there is l…

I think there's a huge difference between everyone having unlimited material goods Star Trek style and UBI being a floor for everyone. I think of UBI as a floor that I can go below no matter how bad I screw up. If I start a company and max out my credit cards to fund it and it goes belly up then no matter how much I still owe to Chase I will still get my $1000/month to pay the rent and put food in my belly.

But I will still want luxury goods and I'm willing to work for them most of the time. I want a phone upgrade every few years which might be a luxury I couldn't afford under UBI. I like flying airplanes and certainly would need to work to pay for that hobby. But if I get burnt out and want to read books for a year then I could do that too!

Re: A world where people pay for software

#410

Post by crazygringo »

Panzer04 wrote: post #387
crazygringo wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I paid $10 each time I showed up. This could be a useful model for rarely-used software. But it already is. Pay for a month and then cancel. Repeat each time you need it. I don't understand why people are assuming you have to pay continuously for years instead of just paying for the months you actually use.

It's a bit frustrating having to "subscribe" and cancel almost everything. I barely signup to anything and I still forget that I'm subscribed to things. Companies are fully aware that many, many people forget about charges on their card and leech off those for extended periods.

Sure but it's also super cheap. That's the benefit. That's the tradeoff.

And it's as easy as setting a calendar reminder.

I do wish you could pay a month without auto renewal turned on, but it's also not a big deal. You can also often just cancel auto-renew immediately after paying, so no need even for a calendar reminder.

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