11–20 of 23 posts
I know very little about economics. I will be happy to know if this 'theorem' is supported by experimental evidence (none were mentioned in the article). Otherwise it should really be called a hypothesis.
"In the middle ages, people had to travel long distances to view concerts, which were performed by live musicians. Thus, the fixed costs of consumption were very high. If you bothered to pay a huge amount of money and time, you might as well view a long complex opera or symphony. On the flip side, when fixed costs are as low as a Google search, people prefer short YouTube videos of cats doing cute things. Don’t think that this means that the quality of culture has gone down."
By that logic, more people could be watching opera videos on YouTube if they cared, since the opportunity cost is the same.
I'm inclined to believe the fact most people prefer cat videos is not because of availability, but because most people are mundane.
I just checked out the wikipedia page of Armen Alchian and it appears that he died today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armen_Alchian .
The article is good, but I need to point the elephant in the room: "In the middle ages, people had to travel long distances to view concerts, which were performed by live musicians. Thus, the fixed costs of consumption were very high. If you bothered to pay a huge amount of money and time, you might as well view a long complex opera or symphony. On the flip side, when fixed costs are as low as a Google search, people…
Like, say you may derive more enjoyment from reading novels than Hacker News comments, but when you sit down to quickly eat breakfast you peruse Hacker News, even though great many high quality novels are also one click away.
The article is good, but I need to point the elephant in the room: "In the middle ages, people had to travel long distances to view concerts, which were performed by live musicians. Thus, the fixed costs of consumption were very high. If you bothered to pay a huge amount of money and time, you might as well view a long complex opera or symphony. On the flip side, when fixed costs are as low as a Google search, people…
The article is good, but I need to point the elephant in the room: "In the middle ages, people had to travel long distances to view concerts, which were performed by live musicians. Thus, the fixed costs of consumption were very high. If you bothered to pay a huge amount of money and time, you might as well view a long complex opera or symphony. On the flip side, when fixed costs are as low as a Google search, people…
The way I understood it, the "cost" of watching an opera on YouTube is the time and mental effort it takes, which is many times greater than the time and mental effort it takes to watch a cat video. Like, say you may derive more enjoyment from reading novels than Hacker News comments, but when you sit down to quickly eat breakfast you peruse Hacker News, even though great many high quality novels are also one click a…
The original analogy compared with the cost of watching an opera on the middle ages, but I get your point: people perceive the value of consuming copious amounts of mundane content to be greater than the reward to be gained from a single, more elaborate content.
Interesting. Would you say it's a race to the bottom of time and mental effort then? Cultural production and consumption is limited by the second law of thermodynamics? That sounds pretty hopeless.
I just checked out the wikipedia page of Armen Alchian and it appears that he died today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armen_Alchian .
I suppose somebody posted this after learning of his death. His theory appearing on the HN front page is a way to remember one of his achievements on the day of his passing.
Should it be called a theorem? It looks to me more like a theory, since economics is not an exact science like mathematics. According to Wikipedia, [1] a theorem is fundamentally deductive, in contrast with a scientific theory, which is empirical. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorem
My guess is that it's a "theorem" in the sense that you could come up with some mathematical model of economics in which some translation of Alchain-Allen into a mathematical statement would be a provable mathematical theorem. Alchain-Allen being true in most or every model of economics (as the Church-Turing thesis [1] is true in most models of computation), or being always true in reality, is a much more debatable q…
By "increase consumption of the higher-quality good," is that in absolute terms, or relative to the lower-quality good? Is there a concrete example of "reasonable" demand functions under which a fixed increase leads to an absolute increase of the higher-quality good?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose somebody posted this after learning of his death. His theory appearing on the HN front page is a way to remember one of his achievements on the day of his passing.
That's what I figured.