3 ms·

People routinely pay $3 for a single cup of drip coffee or $6 for a shot of liquor

by mbrock 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Coffee and liquor are made of matter, not information, and thus cannot be infinitely copied for near-zero energy expenditure. This is what gives them a practical price floor.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. I'm sure performing quality research costs many man hours, traveling, opportunity costs for stories that don't pan out, legal costs, etc. At the end of the day, however, all you need is the fact that there are no successful paid podcasts, and the most successful ones use advertising. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating one, and it's not a novel idea. Same with newspapers. The very fact that one doesn't exist, when the alternative (paid version without advertising) is a known idea and easily executable, must mean that there is a problem with the business model itself. Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising. Perhaps a sufficient number of people simply aren't willing to pay a sufficient price for them to exist without advertising.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. There are economic principles, though. In competitive markets, price is roughly what the market will bear. Physical goods have a price floor, because you can't sustainably sell such goods for below manufacturing costs. Digital goods scale for free, which removes any realistic price ceiling - that's why piracy exists, and that's why there's a market pressure to make the price close to $0. > Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising. This is precisely the problem, in my opinion. Moreover, there's no actual market pressure - only creator's own ethics - to offer ad-free, paid version. With the current market landscape, if you're offering a paid product, you can only gain by adding advertising to it.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      What I always wonder is: what will happen when Star Trek style replicators are invented, and physical goods can also be copied and printed out infinitely many times at practically zero cost? Will that coffee’s price drop to $0.01? If I replicate that coffee, will I be an illegal coffee pirate? Will the government make replicators illegal?

People routinely pay $3 for a single cup of drip coffee or $6 for a shot of liquor

by mbrock 7y ago

People routinely pay $3 for a single cup of drip coffee or $6 for a shot of liquor

Coffee and liquor are made of matter, not information, and thus cannot be infinitely copied for near-zero energy expenditure. This is what gives them a practical price floor.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. I'm sure performing quality research costs many man hours, traveling, opportunity costs for stories that don't pan out, legal costs, etc. At the end of the day, however, all you need is the fact that there are no successful paid podcasts, and the most successful ones use advertising. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating one, and it's not a novel idea. Same with newspapers. The very fact that one doesn't exist, when the alternative (paid version without advertising) is a known idea and easily executable, must mean that there is a problem with the business model itself. Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising. Perhaps a sufficient number of people simply aren't willing to pay a sufficient price for them to exist without advertising.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. There are economic principles, though. In competitive markets, price is roughly what the market will bear. Physical goods have a price floor, because you can't sustainably sell such goods for below manufacturing costs. Digital goods scale for free, which removes any realistic price ceiling - that's why piracy exists, and that's why there's a market pressure to make the price close to $0. > Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising. This is precisely the problem, in my opinion. Moreover, there's no actual market pressure - only creator's own ethics - to offer ad-free, paid version. With the current market landscape, if you're offering a paid product, you can only gain by adding advertising to it.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    What I always wonder is: what will happen when Star Trek style replicators are invented, and physical goods can also be copied and printed out infinitely many times at practically zero cost? Will that coffee’s price drop to $0.01? If I replicate that coffee, will I be an illegal coffee pirate? Will the government make replicators illegal?