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>micropayments. I disagree strongly, see Nick Szabo, Clay Shirky, and Hal Varian as to why not. So my initial reaction to their arguments was that none of thei

>micropayments. I disagree strongly, see Nick Szabo, Clay Shirky, and Hal Varian as to why not. So my initial reaction to their arguments was that none of their complaints matter as long as it's cheap enough. The fact that my water is metered doesn't make me anxious about usage, because it's too cheap to care. But of course, that's because water is fungible. I have no fear that the water company is going to start sending me expensive mineral water while I'm in the shower to run up my bill. But the exact same forces that lead sites to ridiculous extremes of obnoxious advertising, are likely to push up their micro-costs high enough that people can't ignore them, and most likely stop visiting. The only way I can see it ever working is if there were some way to regulate the costs to avoid this. But I'm not sure there's any way to do that for something so non-fungible.

dredmorbius 11y ago
History says it matters. Make the individual item payments small enough, and quite literally, it isn't worth my time to have to decide on the value. You see, transaction costs matter, and the actual price paid itself is a very small component. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_costs Again: the amount of money necessary to eliminate advertising completely is all but inconsequential. The frictions, costs, inefficiencies, and negative externalities of fractional-mill per-page costs would be stupidly inefficient. E.g., I can read ~50-100 web pages/day. That's, roughly, 36,000 pages, tops, per year, or $0.002 per page. Should I really have to decide one hundred times a day if a page was worth reading? And to what end? If I'm broke enough that that's a concern, then there's a tremendous social inequity in denying me the information. If I'm rich enough that it's not a concern, just bill me the 0.33% out of my income tax that it would cost to provide this. I don't care, literally, it isn't worth my time, and I'm subsidising access for the poor in my own country and around the world. My whole point is that markets and information are exceptionally poorly suited. I've considered your arguments and rejected them. Water, incidentally, is another case where the infrastructure, that is, fixed costs hugely outweight the marginal costs of delivery in most cases.
- aninhumer 11y ago
  >Should I really have to decide one hundred times a day if a page was worth reading? No, and the argument I was suggesting is that if the costs were low enough, no one would really need to make those decisions, any more than they need to decide whether running a glass of water is worth the cost. >If I'm rich enough that it's not a concern, just bill me the 0.33% out of my income tax that it would cost to provide this. Why? If a micropayment system worked well enough that no one cared about the prices, what reason would there be to involve the government? (Not that I'm averse to such a scheme, I just think you're making a strange leap of logic here.) > I've considered your arguments and rejected them. It feels like you just read my first sentence, and reacted to that, despite the fact the rest of my comment argues against that position, and ultimately agrees with you (although from a slightly different direction).
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Then you're creating a per-page accounting system where you still don't need one, with all the tracking and privacy invasion that entails. Measure share of readership, and you're largely set. You're re-iterating (best I can tell) earlier arguments, made and dismissed. HN's "only show the immediate post being replied to", particularly on mobile, makes referencing your GP comments all but impossible, but again: I and others far more intelligent than me have considered and rejected the micropayment arguments and pointed out further inequities they ignore.

dredmorbius 11y ago

History says it matters. Make the individual item payments small enough, and quite literally, it isn't worth my time to have to decide on the value. You see, transaction costs matter, and the actual price paid itself is a very small component. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_costs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_costs Again: the amount of money necessary to eliminate advertising completely is all but inconsequential. The frictions, costs, inefficiencies, and negative externalities of fractional-mill per-page costs would be stupidly inefficient. E.g., I can read ~50-100 web pages/day. That's, roughly, 36,000 pages, tops, per year, or $0.002 per page. Should I really have to decide one hundred times a day if a page was worth reading? And to what end? If I'm broke enough that that's a concern, then there's a tremendous social inequity in denying me the information. If I'm rich enough that it's not a concern, just bill me the 0.33% out of my income tax that it would cost to provide this. I don't care, literally, it isn't worth my time, and I'm subsidising access for the poor in my own country and around the world. My whole point is that markets and information are exceptionally poorly suited. I've considered your arguments and rejected them. Water, incidentally, is another case where the infrastructure, that is, fixed costs hugely outweight the marginal costs of delivery in most cases.

aninhumer 11y ago
>Should I really have to decide one hundred times a day if a page was worth reading? No, and the argument I was suggesting is that if the costs were low enough, no one would really need to make those decisions, any more than they need to decide whether running a glass of water is worth the cost. >If I'm rich enough that it's not a concern, just bill me the 0.33% out of my income tax that it would cost to provide this. Why? If a micropayment system worked well enough that no one cared about the prices, what reason would there be to involve the government? (Not that I'm averse to such a scheme, I just think you're making a strange leap of logic here.) > I've considered your arguments and rejected them. It feels like you just read my first sentence, and reacted to that, despite the fact the rest of my comment argues against that position, and ultimately agrees with you (although from a slightly different direction).
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Then you're creating a per-page accounting system where you still don't need one, with all the tracking and privacy invasion that entails. Measure share of readership, and you're largely set. You're re-iterating (best I can tell) earlier arguments, made and dismissed. HN's "only show the immediate post being replied to", particularly on mobile, makes referencing your GP comments all but impossible, but again: I and others far more intelligent than me have considered and rejected the micropayment arguments and pointed out further inequities they ignore.