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Realistically, digital goods should be "free." If you want digital goods at all you'll learn to pay real money for them. My house & food require real money to

Realistically, digital goods should be "free." If you want digital goods at all you'll learn to pay real money for them. My house & food require real money to buy, and I can either think those digital goods into existence for you to pay real money for, or I can grow that food and build that house while you don't get those digital goods at all.

lmm 10y ago
But there are plenty of people who are willing to produce high-quality digital goods for next to nothing. They will undercut you.
- ssalazar 10y ago
  Name one. Someone who makes something that persists longer than the 5 minutes it takes to Lets Play the latest Call of Duty.
  - lmm 10y ago
    I read Sailor Nothing about 7 years ago and it's stayed with me better than most of the books I've read (and paid for) since then. And maybe that author never wrote anything since (I honestly wouldn't know), maybe they went into paid creation... but the only reason that matters is the discovery problem. If we're assuming excellent automatic recommendation services then it doesn't matter if every creator is a "one-hit wonder".
    - ctdonath 10y ago
      Your one example is an obscure book from 7 years ago? How about you enumerate all the digital content you've used over the last week (books, music, movies, games, software, tools, etc) and identify what percentage of them were created with zero expectation of financial gain? Yes, some people make digital content as a hobby and produce laudable results, but most of the time if you want quality you're going to have to pay for it because "zero distribution cost" doesn't put food on the table.
      - lmm 10y ago
        > Your one example is an obscure book from 7 years ago? The comment I was replying to asked for one example and asked specifically about persistence, that's why I gave the example of something I remembered reading 7 years ago (the work itself is 8 or so years older than that IIRC). > How about you enumerate all the digital content you've used over the last week (books, music, movies, games, software, tools, etc) and identify what percentage of them were created with zero expectation of financial gain? Yes, some people make digital content as a hobby and produce laudable results, but most of the time if you want quality you're going to have to pay for it because "zero distribution cost" doesn't put food on the table. That's the wrong percentage to ask about - a better question is how much content would have to disappear before it started to noticeably impact my life. 99%? 99.9%? 99.99%? That would still leave many lifetimes' worth of high-quality content. Are you so sure those hobbyists couldn't sustain the 0.01% or less that people need?

lmm 10y ago

But there are plenty of people who are willing to produce high-quality digital goods for next to nothing. They will undercut you.

ssalazar 10y ago
Name one. Someone who makes something that persists longer than the 5 minutes it takes to Lets Play the latest Call of Duty.
- lmm 10y ago
  I read Sailor Nothing about 7 years ago and it's stayed with me better than most of the books I've read (and paid for) since then. And maybe that author never wrote anything since (I honestly wouldn't know), maybe they went into paid creation... but the only reason that matters is the discovery problem. If we're assuming excellent automatic recommendation services then it doesn't matter if every creator is a "one-hit wonder".
  - ctdonath 10y ago
    Your one example is an obscure book from 7 years ago? How about you enumerate all the digital content you've used over the last week (books, music, movies, games, software, tools, etc) and identify what percentage of them were created with zero expectation of financial gain? Yes, some people make digital content as a hobby and produce laudable results, but most of the time if you want quality you're going to have to pay for it because "zero distribution cost" doesn't put food on the table.
    - lmm 10y ago
      > Your one example is an obscure book from 7 years ago? The comment I was replying to asked for one example and asked specifically about persistence, that's why I gave the example of something I remembered reading 7 years ago (the work itself is 8 or so years older than that IIRC). > How about you enumerate all the digital content you've used over the last week (books, music, movies, games, software, tools, etc) and identify what percentage of them were created with zero expectation of financial gain? Yes, some people make digital content as a hobby and produce laudable results, but most of the time if you want quality you're going to have to pay for it because "zero distribution cost" doesn't put food on the table. That's the wrong percentage to ask about - a better question is how much content would have to disappear before it started to noticeably impact my life. 99%? 99.9%? 99.99%? That would still leave many lifetimes' worth of high-quality content. Are you so sure those hobbyists couldn't sustain the 0.01% or less that people need?