{"items": [{"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633709973012", "anchor": "fb-633709973012", "service": "fb", "text": "No one complaining about this fails to understand what the \"exchange theory of value\" is. We just think it doesn't work particularly well to model the world because people aren't actually perfectly rational Homo economicus you paint them as.
It is perfectly possible to be perfectly happy with each individual transaction you make (giving a story away because it's such a thrill to be published or whatever) and still find that the aggregate result of those choices makes you very unhappy. Most frustrated creatives would say that's exactly what happens.", "timestamp": "1383190233"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633714074792", "anchor": "fb-633714074792", "service": "fb", "text": "You say \"we're better off\" (and most of us are--consumers and those newly enabled to write), but there are losers in this trend. Not that I'm inclined to be sad about this or other efficiency gains just because there are losers.", "timestamp": "1383192244"}, {"author": "Scott", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633719154612", "anchor": "fb-633719154612", "service": "fb", "text": "This (fees for photo usage) is discussed extensively at the aviation photography websites I upload to. I get so many requests that I typically ignore, maybe I should prepare a boilerplate response.", "timestamp": "1383195456"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633742268292", "anchor": "fb-633742268292", "service": "fb", "text": "@Arthur: \"No one complaining about this fails to understand what the 'exchange theory of value' is\"
Kreider isn't writing as if he does, and while that may be an intentional choice to ignore the theory, nearly all of the comments I've seen agreeing with the article ignore it as well. It's true I'm not saying anything particularly novel; this is an attempt to explain standard economics in an approachable way.
I think most people who feel frustrated by their lack of income after giving away a lot of their work would feel more frustrated by their lack of income combined with lack of popularity if they had chosen not to. The real issue is that lots of people want to be creatives and it's becoming ever easier to get into it.", "timestamp": "1383220373"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633742532762", "anchor": "fb-633742532762", "service": "fb", "text": "@Scott: \"I get so many requests that I typically ignore, maybe I should prepare a boilerplate response.\"
A boilerplate response would probably change a very small number of those requests into paying requests but would also increase the amount of time you spend handling requests. Maybe try for a while and see if you get any takers?", "timestamp": "1383220661"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633750377042", "anchor": "fb-633750377042", "service": "fb", "text": "I really don't want to get into a prolonged discussion of this, but it is not true that most people who give their work away for free feel happier than they would if they never did the work at all.
This is getting into psychology and why standard economics fails to describe it, but there's a uniquely shitty feeling that comes from working hard on something in expectation of future rewards (which is what most aspiring writers are really after -- \"exposure\" that will lead to actual sales or at least genuine widespread acclaim -- and then having that promise broken. And that is actively worse than just not doing it, no matter what motivational speakers may say about it.
This operates at a very deep level -- even in experiments on chimps we can see that activities they used to take pleasure in lose their pleasure if they are allowed to observe others being rewarded for it while they themselves are not -- they will actually stop doing things they enjoy if they perceive that they could be being rewarded but aren't, even though nothing about their own situation has changed. This is clearly \"irrational\" on an individual basis but adaptive over the long run for the species, just as unions increase unemployment in the short run but raise standards of living and decrease income inequality for everyone in the long run.
And yes, I honestly think everyone was better off when there were more cultural gatekeepers, such that good writers could make a decent living getting published and bad writers were simply not published at all, rather than the reality we are approaching where everyone gets published and nobody gets paid and nobody even gets noticed above the noise. It's unfair to the good writers but also unfair to the bad writers, who are making the understandable but destructive choice to shortsightedly (as humans do) throw out a system that would give them incentives and pressures to become good, if they actually have that potential, in favor of getting the short term validation hit of seeing their name online only to vanish in the deluge of other names ten minutes later.", "timestamp": "1383226343"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633750796202", "anchor": "fb-633750796202", "service": "fb", "text": "Tl;dr -- I think standard economics as you call it is simply wrong about how human beings work. I think it describes how the world actually does work and as a result why so many human beings in the world are frustrated and unhappy.
A system that actively tells people \"You're not good at this\" and pushes them away from it entirely to do something they are good at would be much better for the world than the one you propose where everyone is free to try as much as they want and hope to win the lottery.", "timestamp": "1383226556"}, {"author": "Joseph", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633751804182", "anchor": "fb-633751804182", "service": "fb", "text": "The argument in the article seems to rest on the assumption that everyone has the money to pay other people to do what they don't want to do, and to not be concerned about not getting paid for their efforts. To people who are struggling to make a living, seeing people express this view would be amusing if it weren't so dismaying. Yes, air and water are free, but rent and food are not.", "timestamp": "1383227398"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633752847092", "anchor": "fb-633752847092", "service": "fb", "text": "The exchange \"theory\" of value isn't really a theory -- it's simply an assertion, empirically unfalsifiable.
When people talk about it as a \"theory\" the theorem they're actually advancing is that the exchange theory of value is the view of value most consonant with our basic moral intuitions -- and when this manifestly fails to be the case, when the free market of exchange leads to situations that make 99% of human beings recoil in horror and say \"How the hell did HE make a million dollars while SHE can barely pay rent?\", libertarians honestly have the nerve to thereupon move the goalposts and say the problem is with our morality, not with the theory of free exchange.
In other words, the Nozickian Wilt Chamberlain thought experiment is total crap.
The fact that a free system of exchange can lead to Kim Kardashian making 10,000 times as much money as a teacher and people recoil at this is evidence that a free system of exchange is in fact flawed -- it is not evidence that people's internal gauge of \"value\" is flawed and they need to alter it so that there's no moral problem with Kim Kardashian.
Similarly, most people are NOT okay with the fact that our current system means the people who own network monopolies on \"content delivery\" mechanisms are rich beyond the dreams of all lucre while the people who make the actual \"content\" often end up homeless -- thanks to \"basic structural qualities of the information marketplace\".
This is not a sign that people's intuitions are wrong and need to be corrected, it is a sign that THE MARKET IS FUCKED UP and the rules need to change.
One of the things that pisses me off royally the most about Less Wrong libertardation is the belief that anthropomorphized \"markets\" are smarter than the actual people who compose those markets. I don't think that actually taking a simple opinion poll about how much everyone in society should have is the best idea, but I think it'd be a damn sight better than the actual results of a \"free system of exchange\", where most people don't have any idea that their shortsighted media consumption habits are a \"vote\" for asshole parasite suits to make seven figures and for the artists they claim to \"love\" to starve.", "timestamp": "1383228014"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633761035682", "anchor": "fb-633761035682", "service": "fb", "text": "@Arthur: \"it is not true that most people who give their work away for free feel happier than they would if they never did the work at all.\"
Now we have a factual disagreement. If this is true then I think Krieder's message that people should stop doing work for free is valuable. But is it? Or can we figure out which subset of people it does apply to, and try and target the message at them?
I think the relevant subset might be \"people who think doing this thing for free is likely to lead to large amounts of money in the future, without strong evidence that it actually works this way\". For example, all the people posting photos to flickr that are CC licensed are in a sense giving work away for free, but they have no expectation of getting paid so I wouldn't expect them to be unhappy when they didn't. Similarly I think most people who write blogs don't expect to get money out of it. On the other hand, writers who think that if they get some pieces onto big name sites then they'll be able to turn that into a reasonably well paying career are probably not going to get what they're hoping for, so they seem good people to warn.
\"I honestly think everyone was better off when there were more cultural gatekeepers, such that good writers could make a decent living getting published and bad writers were simply not published at all, rather than the reality we are approaching where everyone gets published and nobody gets paid and nobody even gets noticed above the noise\"
Has the quality of writing declined? My impression is that the quality of mainstream writing has stayed similar while within any niche the quality and availability have gone way up. It's also clearly not true that people don't get noticed; some people do end up coming out of the noise to where lots of people see their stuff. Take Bruce Schneier, Randall Munroe, or Matt Yglessias.", "timestamp": "1383232390"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633762283182", "anchor": "fb-633762283182", "service": "fb", "text": "@Arthur: \"The fact that a free system of exchange can lead to Kim Kardashian making 10,000 times as much money as a teacher and people recoil at this is evidence that a free system of exchange is in fact flawed -- it is not evidence that people's internal gauge of 'value' is flawed and they need to alter it so that there's no moral problem with Kim Kardashian.\"
This is what I'm arguing against in the post: monetary compensation isn't the same as value. When people see that X gets paid or costs more than Y while Y is more valuable they tend to think this means we're not valuing Y properly. But really value is only one thing that goes into determining costs, so don't read value into money, at least not naively.
The effect of celebrities getting paid more than teachers probably shifts some people from trying to become teachers to trying become celebrities. All the people who tried and failed to become celebrities are much less visible than the few that happened to succeed, which means people's estimate of the likely consequences of their actions will be off. Problem. While I've encountered the meme that celebrity isn't a good career path some, the counter-meme is much stronger, so it would be valuable to continue trying to convince people that this approach is both very high variance and also low in expected value.", "timestamp": "1383233130"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633762617512", "anchor": "fb-633762617512", "service": "fb", "text": "The argument that money does not equal value is a privileged argument. It is an argument that can only be made about a population so affluent that the opportunity cost of working hard on something that produces no money doesn't negatively impact their ability to live.
If we reach a communist state where everyone has sufficient means for a decent life and you want to set up some Whuffie-based \"free market\" for luxuries, reputation and status over and beyond that, fine. Pretending that we live in that world today is ridiculous.", "timestamp": "1383233343"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633763610522", "anchor": "fb-633763610522", "service": "fb", "text": "In other words I don't disagree with you that in reality money isn't the same as value. But you seem to be saying that it doesn't MATTER that money isn't the same as value, and that we shouldn't be upset about it.
I viciously, vociferously, vehemently disagree with that. The fact that money isn't the same thing as value does matter. It may well, in fact, be the only thing that matters, and the thing most worth getting upset about because it is the root of everything else worth getting upset about.", "timestamp": "1383233824"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633777707272", "anchor": "fb-633777707272", "service": "fb", "text": "I think Jeff's really just pointing to the fact that money is more related to marginal value than some other idea of value. If lots people want to do the same thing, that makes one more doing it less valuable on the margin, right? I don't see why we should be upset that money picks up on that fact.
When Jeff said that the request for free work doesn't mean the work isn't valuable, I don't really know what it means. But if $0 is the most the requester is willing to pay for the work, that's a strong indication that the marginal value to the requester is roughly $0.", "timestamp": "1383239575"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633778036612", "anchor": "fb-633778036612", "service": "fb", "text": "Sure, that's a simple mathematical reason that the capitalists have leverage in wage negotiations (the worker is more replaceable than the capitalist), and it's the reason collective bargaining was created, to try to even out that disparity.
But collective bargaining has been gutted, and now we have articles like Jeff's trying to nip the possibility of a new union movement for creative workers in the bud by claiming that having your wages driven to the bottom of the barrel by a Prisoner's Dilemma is just the natural and normal way things should work.", "timestamp": "1383239709"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633778650382", "anchor": "fb-633778650382", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm not sure how much of the dynamic is (1) Prisoners' Dilemma vs. (2) an abundance of people who get money in other wants and just want to write (etc.) for free. I guess it probably depends on the field.
I can see why (2) would have increased lately. I'm not sure about (1). It seems important to separate the two, though, for the purposes of figuring out what you think the problem is (if any) and solving it.", "timestamp": "1383240058"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633779304072", "anchor": "fb-633779304072", "service": "fb", "text": "FWIW, I think we're probably rich enough to give everyone [in the US] \"sufficient means for a decent life\", so that's the solution I'd prefer, and instead of a whuffie-based currency for luxuries we'd stick with dollars.
But this view is in tension with other preferences I have (open immigration), so I'm not really sure how to handle that.", "timestamp": "1383240523"}, {"author": "Arthur", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633779633412", "anchor": "fb-633779633412", "service": "fb", "text": "(2) isn't the Prisoner's Dilemma but it's still a market failure. It's the result of the privileged elite (people who have the free time to write without worrying about making a living) being able to poach the income source of people without that privilege.
I would argue that crowding out the ability of people who desire and are qualified for a professional life as a full-time writer -- and would have serious difficulty finding fulfilling and profitable employment otherwise -- with talented hobbyists and dilettantes is immoral. It's immoral even in the best-case scenarios, when the hobbyists and dilettantes are genuinely talented (as opposed to what we have now where the total amount of good writing hasn't really gone up, we've just been exposed to a much larger ocean of crap).
It's morally equivalent to the old tradition of aristocrats going out into the woods to hunt game for sport, while there were poor people actually living by the woods who depended on hunting that game for sustenance.", "timestamp": "1383240707"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633781998672", "anchor": "fb-633781998672", "service": "fb", "text": "I don't think (2) is like hunting game for sport, unless the quantity of game was unlimited and the way the poor people were hurt by the aristocrats' hunting was by aristocrats giving their game away to people the poor people would have sold it to.
It seems much more akin to an efficiency increase (e.g. through better technology) in the sense that there's something people used to have to pay for and now they don't. There's a whole complicated set of issues there around who's better off, who's worse off, increasing need for redistribution, etc. But in general I think efficiency gains are, for the most part, a good thing.", "timestamp": "1383241955"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633783171322", "anchor": "fb-633783171322", "service": "fb", "text": "This points to the difference in how you'd handle (1) vs. (2) -- efficiency increases do (I think?) tend to increase inequality, and so \"should\" (in some sense that I'm not going to make precise) come with increases in the amount of redistribution we do. I believe that has been the historical trend in the West over the last ~300 years, but I guess I'm not sure.", "timestamp": "1383242530"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633783331002", "anchor": "fb-633783331002", "service": "fb", "text": "There's a big difference between saying that rich people writing for free is a market failure, and saying that rich people writing for free is immoral. The former is plausible, the latter is ridiculous.", "timestamp": "1383242614"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633790825982", "anchor": "fb-633790825982", "service": "fb", "text": "@Todd: \"big difference between saying that rich people writing for free is a market failure, and saying that rich people writing for free is immoral\"
Arthur is saying that rich people writing for free is harming people who would like to write for a living. The idea that you shouldn't do things with bad effects isn't ridiculous.", "timestamp": "1383246186"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633791150332", "anchor": "fb-633791150332", "service": "fb", "text": "@David: I would extend \"money is more related to marginal value than some other idea of value\" to \"money is more related to differences in marginal value than some other idea of value\". (Internet peering is a reasonable example of this; compared to their next best alternative peering is a lot better for both organizations.)", "timestamp": "1383246435"}, {"author": "Wesley", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633796290032", "anchor": "fb-633796290032", "service": "fb", "text": "We all need to make a living. We all have real bills. If you CAN'T pay, let's discuss it and work something out. But if you can and won't, you're just a douchebag. Ultimately, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ydqjqZ_3oc", "timestamp": "1383249345"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633804753072", "anchor": "fb-633804753072", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, \"differences in marginal value\" doesn't sound right though. If the marginal value of a transaction between us is $100 for me and $500 for you, the money exchanged could be anywhere from I give you $100 to you give me $500. \"You pay me the difference in marginal value\" corresponds to me getting most put not all the gains from trade. I don't think there's anything special about that number. Maybe half the difference is special, in that that corresponds to splitting the gains from trade evenly. What actually happens isn't determined by the information that's in my hypothetical so far.", "timestamp": "1383253501"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633804862852", "anchor": "fb-633804862852", "service": "fb", "text": "(...except insofar as we know that the marginal values put bounds on the outcome)", "timestamp": "1383253569"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633806838892", "anchor": "fb-633806838892", "service": "fb", "text": "It's easy to get confused about this stuff. I almost thought \"my marginal value is smaller so I'm more willing to walk away so I should get more of the gains\". But that's kind of ridiculous. It's really just like there's $600 sitting there and we have to either agree on how to split it, or burn it.", "timestamp": "1383254504"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633807048472", "anchor": "fb-633807048472", "service": "fb", "text": "Of course, if I'm totally committed to the idea that I deserve most of the gains and convince you I won't back down from that, then I'll probably get them. Confusing stuff. This book (http://www.amazon.com/The-Strategy-Conflict.../dp/0674840313), which I think David German suggested to me a few years ago, is really good.", "timestamp": "1383254598"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633810591372", "anchor": "fb-633810591372", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Arthur is saying that rich people writing for free is harming people who would like to write for a living. The idea that you shouldn't do things with bad effects isn't ridiculous.\"
Saying you shouldn't do something and saying it's immoral are different things. Moreover, in this particular case, even the \"shouldn't\" seems too strong to me:
1. Who is he to tell people what to do with their free time?
2. I would like to do X for a living, but I can't because I'm not very good at it. Is it immoral for people who are better at X to do it (whether they're making a living or not)?
3. I would like to do X for a living, but I can't because the market doesn't value it very much. Is it immoral for people not to want to pay me to do X?
We don't have an obligation, moral or otherwise, as either individuals or a society, to ensure that everyone gets to make their living however they want. The idea that people who engage in otherwise perfectly reasonable activities should not do so, let alone that it's IMMORAL that they do so, because it indirectly affects the ability of some people to make money in a particular field, is definitely ridiculous.", "timestamp": "1383256095"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633811499552", "anchor": "fb-633811499552", "service": "fb", "text": "It might be a market failure, but not everything that is a market failure indicates people doing things they shouldn't, or things that are immoral.", "timestamp": "1383256633"}, {"author": "Todd", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633814628282", "anchor": "fb-633814628282", "service": "fb", "text": "Incidentally, under the logic that says that rich people writing for free is immoral, Jeff, your blog is immoral. I find that preposterous.", "timestamp": "1383258264"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633881648972", "anchor": "fb-633881648972", "service": "fb", "text": "@Todd: \"under the logic that says that rich people writing for free is immoral, Jeff, your blog is immoral\"
I don't agree with Arthur that rich people writing for free is harmful. But if by blogging I were actually causing substantial net harm, like people dying who wouldn't otherwise, I'd agree that it would be immoral to continue.", "timestamp": "1383268597"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633884238782", "anchor": "fb-633884238782", "service": "fb", "text": "@Wesley: I haven't seen the movie your clip is from, so I think I'm missing some context. Watching it, it sounds like it's about not being willing to negotiate with someone who owes money. This is very different from people knowingly doing work for free.", "timestamp": "1383269374"}, {"author": "Scott", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/633705786402?comment_id=633959532892", "anchor": "fb-633959532892", "service": "fb", "text": "I return to my photography example since it is familiar to me. The aviation photography websites I use seem to have this dual nature of the value of art figured out. Everyone uploads their pictures, which are protected by both copyright and watermark (sometimes optional or mandatory depending on the site). Now the hobbyists with enough free time and money to travel and take photos can get the satisfaction of having their photos published online, and working photographers can publish their photos online to the same place as a portfolio. So everyone is getting the same 'exposure' for which they pay nothing and also get paid nothing. If a usage request comes along, it's up to the individual photographer to decide whether or not to pursue. The pro will of course demand his fee, while the hobbyist must consider what to do. If they naively give it away for free (eg a hi-res version without any watermark suitable for printing), as I have done occasionally, they are indeed preventing a pro from the possibility of earning a fee with a different shot. But that won't happen very often due to the effort involved. Therefore, the hobbyist may simply refuse the request because they've already gotten the satisfaction they were seeking by uploading in the first place, and now there is no need to pursue a sale. The pro will upload anything and everything to increase their chances of gaining a sale. The hobbyist will only upload photos they think are interesting. And what is interesting to the hobbyist is often not what is interesting to the potential paying customer. So the hobbyist is out enjoying their hobby, while the pro is actually working. Therefore, there is absolutely no harm, and no contradiction in morality or market operation, in hobbyists and pros uploading their photos online, even for different reasons.", "timestamp": "1383320501"}, {"author": "David German", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/111229345142780712481", "anchor": "gp-1383368622515", "service": "gp", "text": "I don't understand why Kreider is blaming the Internet. \u00a0For the last 200-plus years, the payment model for art has been a mix of advertising, subscriptions, donations, sponsorships, tickets, and merchandise. \u00a0Thanks to the Internet, all of these models are democratized like never before. \u00a0Hordes of independent creators are earning a real living from art that would have had no commercial chance in 1990. \u00a0\n
\n
\nIf you can't figure out how to monetize your work in 2013, I suppose you can blame stingy fans or greedy publishers, but I think it's more likely that you just don't have much of an audience.", "timestamp": 1383368622}]}