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There is no market pushback because free services hide negative externalities. So when users choose something that’s free over something they’d have to pay for,

There is no market pushback because free services hide negative externalities. So when users choose something that’s free over something they’d have to pay for, I’d say they’re generally unaware of the negative consequences (either to them or to the rest of society) because by claiming a service is free of charge, the provider is effectively hiding those negative effects, and making their revenue in some opaque way (e.g. advertising) There will never be market pushback as long as those externalities aren’t priced in. And Imho the only for that to happen is for governments to introduce regulation, e.g. by taxing the externalities so that “free” service providers are forced to be more upfront about the actual cost of their service.

rglullis 5y ago
Good diagnosis, terrible treatment. First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? FAANG will be able to eat those costs right away and make it impossible for any competitor to rise up Second, what happened with personal responsibility? We can still choose to patronize companies that do not rely on ads, we can still promote/fund the development of Libre Software that is focused on the users' welfare and not the corporations' bottom line. Most of us here on HN can even help other less tech-savvy people to avoid falling into those traps and educate them about less invasive alternatives. When you say "the government should do X", you imply that we can not do it ourselves. And we pretty much can.
- 411111111111111 5y ago
  > First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? That premise is wrong. Government regulation has lately been mostly done on account of corporations which want to protect their monopolies and strengthen their position, but that doesn't make it inherently so.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > lately If by lately, you mean "basically always", then I'd agree. I'd be hard pressed to think of any regulation that was successfully enacted and led to actual distress and disruption in the big corporations. > that doesn't make it inherently so Why would it be different this time? Can you think of any kind of policy that has any slim chance of passing and would get us rid of Big Tech? And by "Big Tech", I mean all of it, not just the ones that you don't like.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I'm not sure anyone wants to get rid of big tech. Just reign it in. And just enforcing anticompetitive regulations help. The GDPR helps. The EU regulations requiring federated messaging help. The laws in favor net neutrality help.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        > I'm not sure anyone wants to get rid of big tech. Yes, I do. The FSF does. The IndieWeb does. > Just reign it in. To think that this is possible without any type of damaging side-effect is a huge delusion. Trusting more power to Big Government to try to control Big Tech is like saying "Look at all the destruction that Godzilla is making, we need to unleash King Kong to fight it". The only stable solution to avoid global systemic catastrophe is by removing centralized power and redistributing it to local communities. GDPR does not help, quite the opposite. It gave people some illusion of control but did nothing but scare smaller players into compliance. Messaging standardization might actually turn out to be good, but only because none of the dominant companies are from Europe.
        HWR_14 5y ago
        > The FSF does. The IndieWeb does. What are their options for search? I know DDG is an option, but even it seems to rely on Big Tech. > Trusting more power to Big Government to try to control Big Tech But it's definitely worked in the past. Government successfully reigned in a ton of industry. Sure, it hasn't reigned in Big Tech, but so much other stuff.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  >haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo How do clean water requirements, power grid requirements regarding frequency and such, and things like the USPS favor the status quo?
  - rglullis 5y ago
    You are going at this backwards. Ask yourself why were these requirements established in the first place, and who was in condition to meet them. Also, do realize that even these requirements never translated into any kind of service guarantee. It does not solve the overall issue. Case in point: "clean water requirements" in the US did not stop mega corporations from turning bottled water into a multi-billion dollar market, and it only pushed "dirty" manufacturing to China.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      Clean water requirements have to do with the delivery of water to my house not bottling it. >It does not solve the overall issue. It makes it a whole lot better then it would be otherwise. Power companies can and do get fined for not doing what they should, a power that would be beyond the ability of an individual to do. Because of things like the USPS damn near anyone in the US can mail something to anyone else for a decent price which is a net positive for society.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        The point that you are so unwilling to accept is that regulations only get to be enacted if they don't hurt the corporations. > Power companies can and do get fined for not doing what they should. Yet, they still manage to be profitable and in some cases even get government assistance when they fail, when the long-term, "systemically healthy" solution would be to have a framework that allows more diversity in service providers and that does not depend on the survivability of any single entity. Look at Texas and the winter brownouts. Their grid fails whenever it gets so cold to the point that generating energy is not lucrative. Paying the fines is favoring the status quo. "Being a net positive for society" is at best an accidental side effect, not the point of any regulation that gets to be enacted. And there are other ways where we can get the societal benefits without giving away power to these corrupt institutions.
- fooqux 5y ago
  > Second, what happened with personal responsibility? This breaks down when some body else's lack of personal responsibility impacts me. For example, a drunk driver colliding head on with me on the highway. In this case, it's everyone else gravitating to "free" services which in turn make them so ubiquitous that it's near impossible to escape. Even though I don't use Gmail, I'm still impacted when all my contacts use it to send me email. Sure, I guess I could be personally responsible by disowning those contacts, but that's in the extremes.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > Even though I don't use Gmail, I'm still impacted when all my contacts use it to send me email. No, you are not. Even if you wanted to treat it as such, you could drop all incoming email from google, or auto-respond to people saying they need a different email address to reach you. And if you think that doing that is a bad idea at the individual level, ask yourself why would it be acceptable at the global sphere.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    >> Second, what happened with personal responsibility? > This breaks down when some body else's lack of personal responsibility impacts me. Climate change and the ongoing environmental collapse is a good example of such failure.
    - fooqux 5y ago
      That's probably an even better example but for some reason that's still a political issue, and I didn't want to get into that. At least when talking about drunk drivers, everyone can agree it's real, bad, and not the victim's fault.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Yes, personal responsibility and the free market have done so well on this subject, how dare we try something else?? /s Seriously, the free market and personal responsibility have not worked. Let’s try something else. At this point, I’ll take some potential negative externalities over this shitshow.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    It worked pretty well for me and anyone else that is willing to understand "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Wherever I get to maintain a proper "digital hygiene"*, I don't have any of these issues that people love to complain about. But I would bet that whatever regulation gets to be approved, it would not only be ineffective to solve the issues that affect the majority, it would make it harder for the minority that still manages to get away from them. * a simple set of rules to live by. - prefer free-software solutions for all use cases that satisfies your hard requirements, even if they miss on the "nice-to-haves". - self-host as much as possible: see all services you are paying currently and look for existing open self-hosted alternatives. Get an old computer or laptop and run these. Invite your friends and family. If you are not technical, find someone in your close circle that is and ask if they are interested in doing it, offer to help with the costs. - If you don't want to self-host, find service providers that offer these open source services. - use Brave: complain about crypto all you want, it is the only web browser that gives control to the user and that promotes a business model where creators are rewarded directly by the consumers. - use the received BAT to be as generous as possible with open source developers. 5 bucks a month might not mean much, but if 10% of internet users did that I guarantee we would kill all the app stores and their abusive practices. - Do not rely on streaming services. I'd rather pay for a private tracker to download what I want than finance Disney/Comcast/HBO/Amazon/Apple to increase their cultural dominance even further - use alternative frontends whenever you have to access youtube, twitter, medium.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      so now you’re creating a bunch of extra work for yourself so you can host a bunch of content that most people won’t see telling a bunch of software engineers to do things themselves is never going to solve the problem, it’s like telling the pope to go to church the problem is everything else happening to the average people in the world around you - you’re subject to it whether you like it or not. As long as you live in a society problems that facebook twitter and other social media platforms you dont use are causing are going to be your problems too, no matter how deep you bury your head in niche web browsers and self-hosted blogging platforms.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo Not at all. A ton of government regulation is to fix an ongoing problem by changing the status quo. Meatpacking regulations after "The Jungle". The EPA, Clean Air and Clean Water act. Mandatory seat belt laws. The list of "government saw problem, fixed with regulation" is huge. In particular, with FB/Google, the status quo might crumble without ads. Or maybe they'll go to less targeted ads and only make a ridiculous amount of money instead of an insane amount.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    All the examples you brought are from things where the "changes" did not threaten the industries involved or helped consolidate the market into an oligopoly. They pretty much favored the status quo.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      So, you're using "status quo" not in its usual meaning of things staying the same, but instead which corporate entities persist?
      - rglullis 5y ago
        As in "the structure of power", yes.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo Including progressive taxation? Public schooling? Pensions? If so, how do you explain the end of feudal societies? > what happened with personal responsibility? Responsibility comes with power and freedom of choice. When we can only choose between living under corporate surveillance or living without phone/Internet access/etc there's close to no freedom.
northernexposur 5y ago
This is why libraries are amazing - they are objectively funded so that “free” really means “so essential it’s funded for you.” In the case of vulnerable populations that are driven to free services (like the socioeconomically disadvantaged or especially kids), it relieves the pressure to engage in selling one’s self to receive some “free” service. This was more widely accepted in the past when services like NPR and PBS were publicly funded. You know, when we cared about education.

rglullis 5y ago

Good diagnosis, terrible treatment. First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? FAANG will be able to eat those costs right away and make it impossible for any competitor to rise up Second, what happened with personal responsibility? We can still choose to patronize companies that do not rely on ads, we can still promote/fund the development of Libre Software that is focused on the users' welfare and not the corporations' bottom line. Most of us here on HN can even help other less tech-savvy people to avoid falling into those traps and educate them about less invasive alternatives. When you say "the government should do X", you imply that we can not do it ourselves. And we pretty much can.

411111111111111 5y ago
> First, haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo? That premise is wrong. Government regulation has lately been mostly done on account of corporations which want to protect their monopolies and strengthen their position, but that doesn't make it inherently so.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > lately If by lately, you mean "basically always", then I'd agree. I'd be hard pressed to think of any regulation that was successfully enacted and led to actual distress and disruption in the big corporations. > that doesn't make it inherently so Why would it be different this time? Can you think of any kind of policy that has any slim chance of passing and would get us rid of Big Tech? And by "Big Tech", I mean all of it, not just the ones that you don't like.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    I'm not sure anyone wants to get rid of big tech. Just reign it in. And just enforcing anticompetitive regulations help. The GDPR helps. The EU regulations requiring federated messaging help. The laws in favor net neutrality help.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > I'm not sure anyone wants to get rid of big tech. Yes, I do. The FSF does. The IndieWeb does. > Just reign it in. To think that this is possible without any type of damaging side-effect is a huge delusion. Trusting more power to Big Government to try to control Big Tech is like saying "Look at all the destruction that Godzilla is making, we need to unleash King Kong to fight it". The only stable solution to avoid global systemic catastrophe is by removing centralized power and redistributing it to local communities. GDPR does not help, quite the opposite. It gave people some illusion of control but did nothing but scare smaller players into compliance. Messaging standardization might actually turn out to be good, but only because none of the dominant companies are from Europe.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        > The FSF does. The IndieWeb does. What are their options for search? I know DDG is an option, but even it seems to rely on Big Tech. > Trusting more power to Big Government to try to control Big Tech But it's definitely worked in the past. Government successfully reigned in a ton of industry. Sure, it hasn't reigned in Big Tech, but so much other stuff.
JaimeThompson 5y ago
>haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo How do clean water requirements, power grid requirements regarding frequency and such, and things like the USPS favor the status quo?
- rglullis 5y ago
  You are going at this backwards. Ask yourself why were these requirements established in the first place, and who was in condition to meet them. Also, do realize that even these requirements never translated into any kind of service guarantee. It does not solve the overall issue. Case in point: "clean water requirements" in the US did not stop mega corporations from turning bottled water into a multi-billion dollar market, and it only pushed "dirty" manufacturing to China.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    Clean water requirements have to do with the delivery of water to my house not bottling it. >It does not solve the overall issue. It makes it a whole lot better then it would be otherwise. Power companies can and do get fined for not doing what they should, a power that would be beyond the ability of an individual to do. Because of things like the USPS damn near anyone in the US can mail something to anyone else for a decent price which is a net positive for society.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      The point that you are so unwilling to accept is that regulations only get to be enacted if they don't hurt the corporations. > Power companies can and do get fined for not doing what they should. Yet, they still manage to be profitable and in some cases even get government assistance when they fail, when the long-term, "systemically healthy" solution would be to have a framework that allows more diversity in service providers and that does not depend on the survivability of any single entity. Look at Texas and the winter brownouts. Their grid fails whenever it gets so cold to the point that generating energy is not lucrative. Paying the fines is favoring the status quo. "Being a net positive for society" is at best an accidental side effect, not the point of any regulation that gets to be enacted. And there are other ways where we can get the societal benefits without giving away power to these corrupt institutions.
fooqux 5y ago
> Second, what happened with personal responsibility? This breaks down when some body else's lack of personal responsibility impacts me. For example, a drunk driver colliding head on with me on the highway. In this case, it's everyone else gravitating to "free" services which in turn make them so ubiquitous that it's near impossible to escape. Even though I don't use Gmail, I'm still impacted when all my contacts use it to send me email. Sure, I guess I could be personally responsible by disowning those contacts, but that's in the extremes.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > Even though I don't use Gmail, I'm still impacted when all my contacts use it to send me email. No, you are not. Even if you wanted to treat it as such, you could drop all incoming email from google, or auto-respond to people saying they need a different email address to reach you. And if you think that doing that is a bad idea at the individual level, ask yourself why would it be acceptable at the global sphere.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  >> Second, what happened with personal responsibility? > This breaks down when some body else's lack of personal responsibility impacts me. Climate change and the ongoing environmental collapse is a good example of such failure.
  - fooqux 5y ago
    That's probably an even better example but for some reason that's still a political issue, and I didn't want to get into that. At least when talking about drunk drivers, everyone can agree it's real, bad, and not the victim's fault.
falcolas 5y ago
Yes, personal responsibility and the free market have done so well on this subject, how dare we try something else?? /s Seriously, the free market and personal responsibility have not worked. Let’s try something else. At this point, I’ll take some potential negative externalities over this shitshow.
- rglullis 5y ago
  It worked pretty well for me and anyone else that is willing to understand "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Wherever I get to maintain a proper "digital hygiene"*, I don't have any of these issues that people love to complain about. But I would bet that whatever regulation gets to be approved, it would not only be ineffective to solve the issues that affect the majority, it would make it harder for the minority that still manages to get away from them. * a simple set of rules to live by. - prefer free-software solutions for all use cases that satisfies your hard requirements, even if they miss on the "nice-to-haves". - self-host as much as possible: see all services you are paying currently and look for existing open self-hosted alternatives. Get an old computer or laptop and run these. Invite your friends and family. If you are not technical, find someone in your close circle that is and ask if they are interested in doing it, offer to help with the costs. - If you don't want to self-host, find service providers that offer these open source services. - use Brave: complain about crypto all you want, it is the only web browser that gives control to the user and that promotes a business model where creators are rewarded directly by the consumers. - use the received BAT to be as generous as possible with open source developers. 5 bucks a month might not mean much, but if 10% of internet users did that I guarantee we would kill all the app stores and their abusive practices. - Do not rely on streaming services. I'd rather pay for a private tracker to download what I want than finance Disney/Comcast/HBO/Amazon/Apple to increase their cultural dominance even further - use alternative frontends whenever you have to access youtube, twitter, medium.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    so now you’re creating a bunch of extra work for yourself so you can host a bunch of content that most people won’t see telling a bunch of software engineers to do things themselves is never going to solve the problem, it’s like telling the pope to go to church the problem is everything else happening to the average people in the world around you - you’re subject to it whether you like it or not. As long as you live in a society problems that facebook twitter and other social media platforms you dont use are causing are going to be your problems too, no matter how deep you bury your head in niche web browsers and self-hosted blogging platforms.
HWR_14 5y ago
> haven't we learned already that any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo Not at all. A ton of government regulation is to fix an ongoing problem by changing the status quo. Meatpacking regulations after "The Jungle". The EPA, Clean Air and Clean Water act. Mandatory seat belt laws. The list of "government saw problem, fixed with regulation" is huge. In particular, with FB/Google, the status quo might crumble without ads. Or maybe they'll go to less targeted ads and only make a ridiculous amount of money instead of an insane amount.
- rglullis 5y ago
  All the examples you brought are from things where the "changes" did not threaten the industries involved or helped consolidate the market into an oligopoly. They pretty much favored the status quo.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    So, you're using "status quo" not in its usual meaning of things staying the same, but instead which corporate entities persist?
    - rglullis 5y ago
      As in "the structure of power", yes.
goodpoint 5y ago
> any government regulation always ends up favoring the status quo Including progressive taxation? Public schooling? Pensions? If so, how do you explain the end of feudal societies? > what happened with personal responsibility? Responsibility comes with power and freedom of choice. When we can only choose between living under corporate surveillance or living without phone/Internet access/etc there's close to no freedom.

northernexposur 5y ago

This is why libraries are amazing - they are objectively funded so that “free” really means “so essential it’s funded for you.” In the case of vulnerable populations that are driven to free services (like the socioeconomically disadvantaged or especially kids), it relieves the pressure to engage in selling one’s self to receive some “free” service. This was more widely accepted in the past when services like NPR and PBS were publicly funded. You know, when we cared about education.