Paul Graham has lost the plot • Hacker News Board

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#151

Post by batista » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:29 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #119

davidw wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content is scarce if you think not just about distribution, but creation. As a thought experiment, if no one earned anything off of information goods, at all, then fewer of them would be produced.

What? Are you unable to understand the difference between making a statement with unspecified assumptions, and making a crafted argument with carefully specified axioms and clear logical reasoning--while also noting obvious facts about the real-world implementation of the topic you debate? How many songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published? How many love poems are written and not saved? Content is…

>What? Are you retarded?

In a comment starting with such question and attitude you'll very rarely find anything worthwhile...

>How many songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published? How many love poems are written and not saved? Content is far, far from scarce.

So, songs/stories "dreamed but never published" and poems "not saved" mean that content is ...far from scarce?

For one, "not published stories" are as good as NO stories at all, with regards to scarcity.

Second, we are not talking about every BS story everyone thought up at some point as content.

We talk about actual worthwhile content. Most of it is done professionally. Or, if you want to avoid the quality judgement, most of the content people WANT and DO consume, is done professionally.

If the creators weren't compensated there would be less of that content. And , surely, not of equal budget and scale. You can't record "The Wall" or film "The Matrix" without getting paid. Except maybe for some talented multi-millionaire, doing it out of passion. Not many of those around.

I don't think many would take an interest in "songs/stories/etc. are dreamed up by kids and never published".

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#152

Post by tikhonj » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:29 PM UTC

grok2 wrote: post #104

redthrowaway wrote: post #81

The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value . pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to see the movie. You c…

Not sure why you call it economics of scarcity. The distributors want control over the distribution method to make sure they are paid for whatever they are distributing, not to create scarcity. If something is popular, won't distributors try and sell as much of it as is possible.

The two are one and the same--the only way to force people to pay for something is to make that thing scarce. In the case of information, which is not naturally scarce, that scarcity has to be entirely artificial.

If something wasn't scarce--e.g. information sans copyright--then anybody could get it without paying. This is a practical reality that copyright attempts to change by legal means; the argument is that the legal means impose a larger cost than benefit on society.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#153

Post by alexgartrell » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:31 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #79

alexgartrell wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is subsidized by large players who need an open platform on which to provide other services. This includes companies like Google who provide advertising based upon things that run on linux and companies like IBM who sell proprietary software that runs on Linux and support contracts for those products. There are very few viable, large-scale open source projects that are run on developer free time alone.

Do you think you're countering InclinedPlane's point? Because you haven't. You've explained the how to InclinedPlane's what , but that hardly constitutes a disproof.

The thing about proof by contradiction is that you can invalidate it by showing that the contradiction is not, in fact, a contradiction.

Linux is used everywhere, but it's also paid for. If it weren't paid for, it wouldn't be used everywhere.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#154

Post by kenmazy » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

zasz wrote: post #89

angersock wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the GCC folks, GIMP developers, Blender developers, Tremulous developers, Firefox developers, Mono developers, Rails developers, Python developers... (we all know GTK is a labor of love, 'cause you couldn't expect people to pay for it.)

Can you prove that those projects wouldn't be healthier if people were happy to pay money for them?

Can you prove they would be?

How many closed-source, for profit software projects were rescued after the supporting company went under? (I am intentionally conflating closed-source and for profit as the majority of financed projects are closed source).

What you have to consider here is the rate of progress, as well as the length of development time. Open source projects have essentially infinite development time, whereas closed-source, for profit projects have a finite development time (whenever the company decides further development isn't worth it anymore)+. However, open source projects tend to have a slower rate of progress versus financed projects.

After 6 months or 1 year, sure, the financed project will probably be ahead. How about the 5 year mark? 10 year? It becomes much less clear which project will have accumulated more man-hours.

+very rarely, closed-source projects are released as open source (e.g. Doom 3), but I think we can all agree that that is the exception to the norm

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#155

Post by dusklight » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

What if musicians freely allowed the distribution of their music, but charged for concerts? That would be a clear parallel to the "smells" analogy. Many musicians would be able to survive, and it will encourage them to put on more spectacular shows to draw in the crowds.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#156

Post by angersock » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #138

sophacles wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, go to any mid-sized town or bigger, there is at least one recording studio, making decent or good recordings for bands that never hit the "*AA lottery", but make decent money (either in the form of door fees and schwag, some even enough to live on) giving away CDs at shows to keep people coming to the next show. Even more that do the same thing, but keep a day job and do music for the love of it. For every band y…

Every band I've ever gone to see sells CDs at their shows, and they're mostly the kinds of bands you describe. > keep a day job "Producing less of it" because they can't earn enough to do it full time. There would be more people in that boat if, in my thought experiment, they earned absolutely nothing from their content. I don't think we'd actually ever reach that point, but just think about it as a 'what if'.

("thought experiment"--you keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means. What are your terms? What are you trying to show? How does one lead to the other?)

How many artists produce one-hit-wonders and then do basically nothing else, living off of payments? How many other artists produce more in their free time (Zappa, Waits, Infected Mushroom) then others do in their career (Chinese Democracy lol).

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#157

Post by icebraining » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #92

redthrowaway wrote: post #81

The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value . pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to see the movie. You c…

And you're misunderstanding economics too. Just because you can get it for free that does not mean there is no market for people paying for it. > Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value. What shows market value is the desire for that product. The only reason that music is pirated now (when it used to be purchased) is because it's easy and without consequence. Let's say…

the reason they don't steal cars is consequence

Are you saying that 46% of US citizens* would steal a car if it was consequence free? Because I'd like to see some evidence of that.

* The number who have said to have committed copyright infringement.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#158

Post by sp332 » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #150

sp332 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point isn't that IBM etc. make money from open-source software. My point is that they are all charged money by people writing open-source software.

I don't think they're actually charged much - more that they employ some experts who work on the software. It's pretty difficult to charge for goods that are not scarce.

I don't get the difference? The NSA hiring experts to work on SELinux extensions is the same as the NSA paying some experts for the SELinux extensions.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#159

Post by angersock » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #142

guga31bb wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If pirating music was impossible many people would return to paying for music I think you've missed the parent's point. We have left the world where pirating is impossible. The question is how to deal with it. Thinking in unrealistic hypotheticals does little to inform the debate.

It informs the debate in the sense that it confirms music does have value. It's sophistic to claim that music has no value because people can avoid paying for it, which is I think the point your parent was trying to make.

We have to make sure that we do not conflate utility (absolute value) with market value.

Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot

#160

Post by anonymoushn » Wed, Mar 21, 2012, 7:34 PM UTC

andylei wrote: post #146

anonymoushn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly people are certainly attracted to iOS dev because it produces money, but iOS users do not have to pay for apps. It is easy to get apps without paying for them, but Apple has made it very easy to pay for them. I doubt that the absence of copyright would significantly change the proportion of iOS users who use apps without paying for them.

you're totally missing the point. the question is whether the ability to charge money incentivizes programmers to produce code. androsynth argues that the app store shows that it does. there are hundreds if not thousands of apps that would not exist if all apps in the store had to be free.

The OP strongly implies that "The presence of copyright" is the same as "The ability to charge money," and much of the discussion here also assumes that. It is simply not true, though. I would rather discuss what the OP is actually about than the thing that the OP would prefer to substitute for its subject matter to make its case seem better than it is.