5 ms·

The fixed seats on train is only relevant if it fills up. So just imagine the case where it doesn't totally fill and consider his point again and you should see

The fixed seats on train is only relevant if it fills up. So just imagine the case where it doesn't totally fill and consider his point again and you should see the parallel.

jessriedel 16y ago
There are parallels, but surely there's a large, morally important difference between sneaking onto a half empty train with $50 seats, and stealing $50 from someone's wallet.
- xenophanes 16y ago
  Surely it's important to pay attention to what is actually said in discussions. What was being said is that taking a train seat with zero marginal cost to the train owners is parallel to downloading a song which has zero marginal cost to the band or record label. Both are taking something with no marginal cost. The point was that stealing that train seat really is stealing. That means that the argument "there is no marginal cost" is not a sufficient defense of music piracy. It does not exclude some other defense of music piracy.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    My interpretation... krschultz: "Trains have zero marginal cost. We call them stealing. Therefore, zero marginal cost does not prevent something from being called stealing." InclinedPlane: "Trains are different from music, in that the latter never fills up. Therefore, it is possible for zero marginal cost to be a defense." You: "InclinedPlane, just imagine a train which doesn't fill up." Me: "You are right that the half-empty train and piracy are similar. This still doesn't justify calling it stealing." You: "[Snarky comment]. All I was claiming is that they are similar." ...and I agree. I wasn't saying you were wrong in your initial comment, I was saying that you were right but it doesn't complete krschultz's argument. No need to get snarky. Not every reply to your comment is an assertion that you're wrong.
    - xenophanes 16y ago
      Your comment was completely off topic. You said there was a big difference between zero-mariginal-cost stealing and entirely-mariginal-cost stealing. Of course there is, but that has nothing to do with the arguments in the discussion. That's why I said you weren't following the discussion and explained the discussion to you. Now you've rewritten your comment to remove the part about taking money out of someone's wallet and summarized it as "Your statement is true but that doesn't justify a conclusion [that you never asserted]". But the wallet part of your comment was important to your comment and is the reason I replied as I did. The topic of my comments was about the parallel btwn no marginal cost activities (someone denied it with a bad argument, and I said so), so your reply to me (yes it was a reply to me, or you wouldn't have it nested under me) was off topic and missing the point of what I was talking about. It now sounds like you wanted to be talking to the original poster, krschultz, not me, which would have made more sense.
- stoney 16y ago
  Is there such a large, morally important difference? I am going to simplify a lot here, but let's say that the train operator has a fixed operating cost and has a profit target, from which they know the gross revenue that they want over the next quarter. They know how many rides they expect people to pay for, so they divide the target gross revenue by the number of trips to get the ticket price. Assuming that the train timetable is fixed, more paying passengers means they can charge less per ticket and still hit their targets. So in the case of stealing from someone's wallet, the victim takes a $50 hit. In the case on not paying for a train ticket, the operator will have to charge a slightly higher rate to paying passengers, so between them, the paying passengers take a $50 hit. If there's only one person not paying then that doesn't make much difference. But if 1% of passengers aren't paying, or 10%, or 50%... then that can start to affect the paying passengers quite significantly. Or if the train operator is a bit less charitable and doesn't raise/lower the price in response to number of passengers, then the train operator's profit takes a $50 hit, which is passed on to the share holders, who may well be (in part) yours and my pension fund. I would say that just because the $50 loss is divided by a large number of people, it doesn't make it any more morally defensible.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    This would be a good (though not airtight) argument if the person would pay the $50 if he could not sneak on. But in fact, most people who torrent gigabytes of music would not pay for it if they couldn't get it for free. In fact, piracy in this case seems to partially solve the fundamental economics problem. The marginal cost of music is zero, so if people who wouldn't pay full price aren't getting the music, then there is lost utility for society. By giving those people music for free (and, unrealistically, holding everything else constant) it's a Pareto improvement. (And I'm not trying to avoid the argument that stealing $50 from society is morally he same as stealing $50 from a single person; it pretty much is. I'm just saying that the reason that we correctly intuit that sneaking on to a train is less worse than stealing from a wallet is because of considerations like those I've described.)
InclinedPlane 16y ago
That's a bit too far into abstract hypotheticals for me. If I steal a candybar from a convenience store and it just happens to be a candybar that wouldn't have sold before it expired and had to be thrown out, is that stealing? If I shop-lift a screwdriver from home depot and then return it a week later is that stealing?
- philh 16y ago
  > If I shop-lift a screwdriver from home depot and then return it a week later is that stealing? Actually, no. If you intend to return it in the original condition, so they can still sell it, then legally speaking it isn't theft. (It may still be illegal, I don't know.) Just to clarify, I'm not claiming anything about piracy here.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
    So, if I beat the crap out of you, but take you to the hospital later and pay all your bills, it's OK?
  - rprasad 16y ago
    Actually, legally, it is theft. The crime is taking the property from the store without their permission. Whether or not you intend to return in its original condition is beside the point.
    - philh 16y ago
      "A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it". Actually, I'm not sure that US law is the same. But that's how it is in England.
      - rprasad 16y ago
        That's close to the "Restatement" (law school) definition of theft in America. In practice, the statutory definitions of theft are far more expansive, and even where they aren't, case law has made the standard for "permanent deprivation" ridiculously low.
amstrad464 16y ago
Even if the train doesn't fill up, you still need to pay for your ticket to compensate for the fixed costs.

The fixed seats on train is only relevant if it fills up. So just imagine the case where it doesn't totally fill and consider his point again and you should see the parallel.

jessriedel 16y ago

There are parallels, but surely there's a large, morally important difference between sneaking onto a half empty train with $50 seats, and stealing $50 from someone's wallet.

xenophanes 16y ago
Surely it's important to pay attention to what is actually said in discussions. What was being said is that taking a train seat with zero marginal cost to the train owners is parallel to downloading a song which has zero marginal cost to the band or record label. Both are taking something with no marginal cost. The point was that stealing that train seat really is stealing. That means that the argument "there is no marginal cost" is not a sufficient defense of music piracy. It does not exclude some other defense of music piracy.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  My interpretation... krschultz: "Trains have zero marginal cost. We call them stealing. Therefore, zero marginal cost does not prevent something from being called stealing." InclinedPlane: "Trains are different from music, in that the latter never fills up. Therefore, it is possible for zero marginal cost to be a defense." You: "InclinedPlane, just imagine a train which doesn't fill up." Me: "You are right that the half-empty train and piracy are similar. This still doesn't justify calling it stealing." You: "[Snarky comment]. All I was claiming is that they are similar." ...and I agree. I wasn't saying you were wrong in your initial comment, I was saying that you were right but it doesn't complete krschultz's argument. No need to get snarky. Not every reply to your comment is an assertion that you're wrong.
  - xenophanes 16y ago
    Your comment was completely off topic. You said there was a big difference between zero-mariginal-cost stealing and entirely-mariginal-cost stealing. Of course there is, but that has nothing to do with the arguments in the discussion. That's why I said you weren't following the discussion and explained the discussion to you. Now you've rewritten your comment to remove the part about taking money out of someone's wallet and summarized it as "Your statement is true but that doesn't justify a conclusion [that you never asserted]". But the wallet part of your comment was important to your comment and is the reason I replied as I did. The topic of my comments was about the parallel btwn no marginal cost activities (someone denied it with a bad argument, and I said so), so your reply to me (yes it was a reply to me, or you wouldn't have it nested under me) was off topic and missing the point of what I was talking about. It now sounds like you wanted to be talking to the original poster, krschultz, not me, which would have made more sense.
stoney 16y ago
Is there such a large, morally important difference? I am going to simplify a lot here, but let's say that the train operator has a fixed operating cost and has a profit target, from which they know the gross revenue that they want over the next quarter. They know how many rides they expect people to pay for, so they divide the target gross revenue by the number of trips to get the ticket price. Assuming that the train timetable is fixed, more paying passengers means they can charge less per ticket and still hit their targets. So in the case of stealing from someone's wallet, the victim takes a $50 hit. In the case on not paying for a train ticket, the operator will have to charge a slightly higher rate to paying passengers, so between them, the paying passengers take a $50 hit. If there's only one person not paying then that doesn't make much difference. But if 1% of passengers aren't paying, or 10%, or 50%... then that can start to affect the paying passengers quite significantly. Or if the train operator is a bit less charitable and doesn't raise/lower the price in response to number of passengers, then the train operator's profit takes a $50 hit, which is passed on to the share holders, who may well be (in part) yours and my pension fund. I would say that just because the $50 loss is divided by a large number of people, it doesn't make it any more morally defensible.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  This would be a good (though not airtight) argument if the person would pay the $50 if he could not sneak on. But in fact, most people who torrent gigabytes of music would not pay for it if they couldn't get it for free. In fact, piracy in this case seems to partially solve the fundamental economics problem. The marginal cost of music is zero, so if people who wouldn't pay full price aren't getting the music, then there is lost utility for society. By giving those people music for free (and, unrealistically, holding everything else constant) it's a Pareto improvement. (And I'm not trying to avoid the argument that stealing $50 from society is morally he same as stealing $50 from a single person; it pretty much is. I'm just saying that the reason that we correctly intuit that sneaking on to a train is less worse than stealing from a wallet is because of considerations like those I've described.)

InclinedPlane 16y ago

That's a bit too far into abstract hypotheticals for me. If I steal a candybar from a convenience store and it just happens to be a candybar that wouldn't have sold before it expired and had to be thrown out, is that stealing? If I shop-lift a screwdriver from home depot and then return it a week later is that stealing?

philh 16y ago
> If I shop-lift a screwdriver from home depot and then return it a week later is that stealing? Actually, no. If you intend to return it in the original condition, so they can still sell it, then legally speaking it isn't theft. (It may still be illegal, I don't know.) Just to clarify, I'm not claiming anything about piracy here.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  So, if I beat the crap out of you, but take you to the hospital later and pay all your bills, it's OK?
- rprasad 16y ago
  Actually, legally, it is theft. The crime is taking the property from the store without their permission. Whether or not you intend to return in its original condition is beside the point.
  - philh 16y ago
    "A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it". Actually, I'm not sure that US law is the same. But that's how it is in England.
    - rprasad 16y ago
      That's close to the "Restatement" (law school) definition of theft in America. In practice, the statutory definitions of theft are far more expansive, and even where they aren't, case law has made the standard for "permanent deprivation" ridiculously low.

amstrad464 16y ago

Even if the train doesn't fill up, you still need to pay for your ticket to compensate for the fixed costs.