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>Information is a public good, in an economic sense. It is not, generally, something people pay for, and historically hasn't been. Just by being public good do

>Information is a public good, in an economic sense. It is not, generally, something people pay for, and historically hasn't been. Just by being public good does not make something necessarily free. For example street lightning. If you seek information on "Does God exist?" you can get different answers depending whom you ask. Some of these sources made a lot of money in the process, because their information had certain non-zero value to those receiving it. Also certain types of information cost resources to produce. I pay for Youtube because I want to support certain kind of information creation that I consume while not having my intelligence insulted with ads. The same for MIT Technology Review and Nautilus. IMO there is nothing wrong in information costing money but the two problems I see are: - Absolute pricing models create inequality. $1/week for WSJ is very different to someone making $5,000/week vs someone $50/week and they both 'deserve' to have access to it. - The user experience of walled gardens is terrible, as you have to subscribe to each independently

dredmorbius 7y ago
"Public good" is a specific term of art in the economic sense. It doesn't mean that the good has no cost, but that its price fails to correspond to either that and/or the value, where costs of production, price of exchange, and value of use, are three distinct concepts quite often confused in economic discussions (a topic for another day, though I've written on this at https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/48rd02/cost_value_price_money_and_emergy_developing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/48rd02/cost_va... I've also just learnt that Marx anticipates me by a century and a half). A public good: In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be excluded from use or could be enjoyed without paying for it, and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others or the goods can be effectively consumed simultaneously by more than one person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good The problem then is that attempting to enforce per-use payments for access to public goods is tremendously inefficient. You cannot effectively and with low consequences restrict access. The cost, particularly at a global level, will mean that there are many, often billions, who won't have access. Your own ability to pay for content means that you've got an influence that those who don't lack. This ultimately gets us to a Patronage model of content. That's an option, but what you end up with is the patron's interests unduly represented. If you lived in 18th century Europe, your preference in large-ensemble music or visual artworks would best be strongly similar to that of the Catholic Church. I had the realisation, watching a computer animation festival in the late 1980s, that the role of the church in modern computer graphics was largely replaced by tobacco companies, who'd financed a large share of the entries. There is also the contrast of information which the audience seeks vs. that which the creator or publisher wishes to have distributed. The former is copy or content, the latter is advertising and propaganda. They are not always clearly distinguished. And the economics of each are dramatically different. The world I'd like to see is one in which a means-to-pay funding model, some semblance of a universal or basic income, a modest performance bonus, and universal access, are strong if not global norms. Effectively, markets and information play together extraordinarily poorly. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_information_goods_and_markets_are_a_poor_match/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...

dredmorbius 7y ago

"Public good" is a specific term of art in the economic sense. It doesn't mean that the good has no cost, but that its price fails to correspond to either that and/or the value, where costs of production, price of exchange, and value of use, are three distinct concepts quite often confused in economic discussions (a topic for another day, though I've written on this at https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/48rd02/cost_value_price_money_and_emergy_developing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/48rd02/cost_va... I've also just learnt that Marx anticipates me by a century and a half). A public good: In economics, a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be excluded from use or could be enjoyed without paying for it, and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others or the goods can be effectively consumed simultaneously by more than one person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good The problem then is that attempting to enforce per-use payments for access to public goods is tremendously inefficient. You cannot effectively and with low consequences restrict access. The cost, particularly at a global level, will mean that there are many, often billions, who won't have access. Your own ability to pay for content means that you've got an influence that those who don't lack. This ultimately gets us to a Patronage model of content. That's an option, but what you end up with is the patron's interests unduly represented. If you lived in 18th century Europe, your preference in large-ensemble music or visual artworks would best be strongly similar to that of the Catholic Church. I had the realisation, watching a computer animation festival in the late 1980s, that the role of the church in modern computer graphics was largely replaced by tobacco companies, who'd financed a large share of the entries. There is also the contrast of information which the audience seeks vs. that which the creator or publisher wishes to have distributed. The former is copy or content, the latter is advertising and propaganda. They are not always clearly distinguished. And the economics of each are dramatically different. The world I'd like to see is one in which a means-to-pay funding model, some semblance of a universal or basic income, a modest performance bonus, and universal access, are strong if not global norms. Effectively, markets and information play together extraordinarily poorly. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_information_goods_and_markets_are_a_poor_match/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...