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>The BBC commissioned a study that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. But who cares how much it "brings in" ? Wh

>The BBC commissioned a study that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. But who cares how much it "brings in" ? Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allowed developers/researchers/manufacturers to produce ? Apply that to every major opensource software effort, things like IDE's, servers, programming languages/compilers. If you were granted a monopoly (like some software companies are, eg. Microsoft with Android patents) would it allow you to make money ? Sure. Would it create extra value ? Nope. This is why stressing revenue, GDP and all other metrics is loosing perspective, they are a useful tool/indicator of the economy but the goal is providing value to the consumers. Screw the producers it's their job to figure out how to capitalize on their business model. Government should never protect the producer. Will the demand go away if you eliminate the IP laws ? No. So the producers will have to figure out how to create new business models that work in a new environment. You probably want to have transition phase, but instead we are doubling down on IP protection, it's getting ridiculous.

iamgilesbowkett 15y ago
I think you raise a very good point with "how much value does open source provide", but this question: "Why is money the sole metric of wealth." is a) ungrammatical and b) basically a tautology. money is the sole metric of wealth because wealth, quantified, is money. not trying to detract from the point you raise, just getting a bit OCD about logic and grammar.
- jjude 15y ago
  for me, discretionary time is real wealth
  - jlarocco 15y ago
    Arguing against money as a unit of value seems utterly silly to me. The monetary value of "discretionary time" is the amount of money you could have made if you did something else instead.
    - yxhuvud 15y ago
      Value is not the same thing as wealth.
    - barrkel 15y ago
      I have to disagree with you. The price of something is a function of supply and demand; monetary value is determined through price discovery in a market. But not all things are traded, nor are supply and demand perfectly elastic. You will get distorted prices for things through lack of markets and market inefficiencies. More specifically, you can't always do something else revenue-generating instead, and nor would you want to. What's the value of spending time with your children? Can you see how some people would not accept any amount of money to displace all of that time, whereas some others may would (in cases of paid-for adoption / slavery)? I think your outlook is lacking in a specific economic concept: utility.
      - jlarocco 15y ago
        You're kind of missing the point. Obviously, you can't be doing something revenue generating all the time. But for determining the value, that's the way it's done. When you choose to hang out with your kids, you choose that over everything else you could have done. One of the things you could have done is earn money. You decided to give that up, so the monetary cost of doing what you did instead is the money you could have earned but didn't. The market value of your time is, assuming you have a job or charge a consulting fee or whatever, is already determined.
        barrkel 15y ago
        The market value of anything has two sides - supply and demand. If there is no price level at which a transaction will take place because the supply side values the utility of the commodity higher than any amount of money the demand side offers, then you cannot price it in terms of money. What's the value of the Mona Lisa? You can't just go off and find some other painting(s), look at those prices, and come up with a number. The only way you can discover its market price is by testing the market: i.e. putting it up for sale and inviting bids. A person's time is not substitutable; one hour in the morning is not equivalent to one hour in the middle of the night; and 24 hours of it every day is not equivalent to 24 times the price of 1 hour of it. It's not fungible. This limits your ability to put a monetary price on it.
- moonchrome 15y ago
  Sorry, English isn't my first language. I'm against focusing on quantifiable wealth exclusively. Eg. reading HN is worth something to me but I didn't pay any money to do it so it's worthless ? Price is only a reflection of market exchange values, it doesn't account for actual value to the consumers. Eg. food is extremely valuable but is also cheap. Price/money is useful but the goal is to create value for consumers, not to suck them dry :) Profit is a market signal/reward for producers but that doesn't mean that it's == to value created for consumer (see my reply above about monopolies, externalities, etc.)
- SudarshanP 15y ago
  http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
  - joering2 15y ago
    good read. I would love Paul to change this part: "A startup is a small company that takes on a hard technical problem."
jlarocco 15y ago
"Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allowed developers/researchers/manufacturers to produce ?" What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? "Apply that to every major opensource software effort, things like IDE's, servers, programming languages/compilers. If you were granted a monopoly (like some software companies are, eg. Microsoft with Android patents) would it allow you to make money ? Sure. Would it create extra value ? Nope. " I don't understand the point you're making. Obviously somebody thinks Microsoft's Android patents are valuable, or they wouldn't pay to use them. What do you mean by "would it create extra value?" "Government should never protect the producer." At least we agree on something... "Will the demand go away if you eliminate the IP laws ? No. So the producers will have to figure out how to create new business models that work in a new environment. " That makes no sense. Demand existing isn't enough for something to spring into existence. You make it sound like other people slaving away to create music, movies, and software is your birth right or something.
- moonchrome 15y ago
  >What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc. >I don't understand the point you're making. Obviously somebody thinks Microsoft's Android patents are valuable, or they wouldn't pay to use them. What do you mean by "would it create extra value?" Nobody is "using them", in fact nobody knows what patents are in question, all that's known is that Microsoft forced different Android manufacturers to pay up for Linux kernel or they take them to court. That's textbook rent seeking. It's likely that Linux devs arrived at the solution independently (since IIRC it's unknown what patents are in question), or would have done so - so you can't make the point that without granting Microsoft a monopoly you wouldn't have Linux kernel. >That makes no sense. Demand existing isn't enough for something to spring into existence. You make it sound like other people slaving away to create music, movies, and software is your birth right or something. People choose to share their creations, once it's copied the copy is no longer their property. They can do whatever they want with their property but knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good (without infringing on excludable property of others) and creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous. Software can translate nicely to a no IP environment by SaaS, NDAs and open-source development financed by consulting. There are various routes for other industries, and many more can be created. I'm not sure about things like pharmaceuticals and maybe other industries have different conditions that would lead to catastrophic results, but that doesn't apply to software and entertainment, bankrupting Disney and Microsoft != bankrupting a company with 10 years of R&D in cancer treatment research.
gaius 15y ago
Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide Why are feet and miles the metric of distance, can't we just have near and far? More seriously: value has to have a common unit of exchange. The grocery store clerk isn't going to give you your shopping for free because you happened to write some piece of software he isn't even aware of. Money allows value to be stored and transferred. Anything else is just warm fuzzies.
- edoloughlin 15y ago
  > Why are feet and miles the metric of distance. Sorry to be glib, but as someone who lives with a sane system of units and measurements, I can't help but point out the irony of your statement.
  - gaius 15y ago
    I'm in England, but assumed I was replying to an American.
- moonchrome 15y ago
  But that's not the same thing, value is by definition subjective, and price does not express my valuation or your valuation of the items traded, it just expresses the intersection of supply/demand curve. Value provided by antibiotics is enormous and yet antibiotics are cheap. If we created a law saying that I have a legal monopoly on all antibiotics sales for the next 20 years, the price of antibiotics would go up but it's value/utility wouldn't have to change - we don't need to quantify that statement to evaluate it. It's still very high on your marginal utility list, so you pay more. And the GDP was "increased" (assuming the money spent was from savings/loan that wouldn't be spent in the time measured otherwise) but you aren't any richer, only the producer is, and he got rewarded for monopolistic pricing. Profit is a good incentive when the producer corrected the resource allocation to take capital to a more productive use under the market rules, but it can be perverted if you don't have competition putting pressure, have rent seeking or don't account for negative externalities.
- jlangenauer 15y ago
  You're confusing use-value (the intrinsic value of something) with exchange-value (what the thing can be exchanged for - aka price). Much of mainstream economics reduces the broad philosophical concept of value to the narrow economic concept of exchange-value or price. And it's not warm and fuzzy: what's the "value" of an unpolluted atmosphere? What's the value of good health? These things generally defy attempts to be priced (though what attempts have been made are risible), yet are fundamental - perhaps even more so than money - to a decent human existence.
davidw 15y ago
Because the people who (#)&#(#^^&% write Linux need money for things like houses, cars, food, health care, school, and so on. That's why money counts.
- moonchrome 15y ago
  As opposed to people who produce food, or oil, or anything else ? But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? People who wrote Linux found a model that works without forcing other people to pay for it. They do rely on copyright to prevent "free riders" but even without it the financial model is the same, eg. FreeBSD, or any other non copy-left licensed opensource project that has a commercial story. It turns out that without software, hardware is pretty much useless, so even if you can't profit on software directly, you can expect things like OS development to be driven by hardware manufacturers. Money they could earn if they had monopolies on OS kernels would be extremely higher - but market isn't about creating profit for the producers - it's about creating value for the consumer, and consumer would get the value even if he didn't pay for it - so they are getting screwed by rent seeking.
  - davidw 15y ago
    > But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? No, not in and of itself. It's a messy compromise. Things like software patents are pretty much just bad. Copyright, in a limited form, seems to be good. Patents on things like medicines can be good in that they pay for research. All of them should be more limited than they currently are, most likely. Linux works, but who's to say it's 'optimal'? Given the huge amount of value it creates, I think relatively little filters back into the development of the system. > consumer would get the value even if he didn't pay for it If no one pays for it, the consumer will not get the value because the developer will have to do something else to make money, and will therefore not produce the code. Luckily, in the case of Linux, some money is funneled back into development, so it's not impossible, it's just much, much more complex than with "intellectual property".
    - moonchrome 15y ago
shoham 15y ago
"Screw the producers" With all respect to you as a person, fuck that. I'm an independent artist and I don't want to be screwed. Consumers tend to get what they want and eat what they're told to. It's small, independent businesses and artists who shape, have shaped, and will always shape the world that you live. you're welcome.
- figglesonrails 15y ago
  Agreed that consumers can be sheep. Here's the problem though: the (BIG) producers are using various means inaccessible to smaller ones to change laws. And not in small way. And not in a way that benefits consumers. People who get uptight about independent artists having their works digitally copied probably don't realize that this is a good thing. It means they are popular, it means people desire them, it means there is a market just waiting for you. Maybe it is time for a live performance, a tour, a gig, an exhibition, etc. People seem to be so obsessed with selling copies of our work that perhaps they are forgetting what it meant to be an artist before easy, direct, reasonably faithful, copying was even "a thing". Digital art, like code, is too easily copied to be controlled. As a programmer, I've come to terms with this. That doesn't mean that I won't ever make money, it just means that I'd make less than if there was a DRM system for everything that criminalized all of my users (note: users, not customers). And I'm OK with this. Perhaps this not OK with everyone (from the RIAA to the self-important programmer/artist), but I see fighting "pirates" as counterproductive and a waste of resources. I work as a programmer full time. I get paid to do in-house company development. We don't sell any software, we sell physical products. I get paid for my expertise and for my ability to fix issues immediately. I work as an open sourcer whenever-time. My work is free. Not "GPL", not "BSD". Free. As in, go, take it. No copyright asserted. Public domain where exists. WTFPL. Companies can steal my work and make it their own. They can modify it and resell it if they choose. It's financial suicide, right? It is, until you realize that programming is a skill that has to be paid for. Companies can steal and modify code IF AND ONLY IF they have someone to modify it. That means they are paying someone to modify the code. That means a programmer is still getting paid. The question is -- why can't that be me? Maybe I need to advertise myself as being the person you SHOULD hire instead of diverting company resources on acquiring an in-house person who is vaguely familiar with my code. What if they need a fix NOW, not 3 weeks from when I plan to release the next version for them to steal? They can escalate the priority with $$$. There are too many ways to monetize this. This leaves me in an interesting position then. I'm the creator, and I'm getting paid for my services and my knowledge. I'm not getting ANYTHING for my product. Easy conclusion: if your only value is your product, and your product is free (or can, via Copy/Paste, be made free), then you are worthless. If you're an artist, you have it even easier. Music will pretty much always sound better live, pictures of sculptures will never do them justice, a video of a play will never be the same as a live performance where you can see and smell the sweat, and seeing the paint on a framed, rough canvas will never be the same as 1000 DPI print. In a way, this digital revolution has expanded art's ability to spread (unwillingly or not) but has also put a spotlight on novel ways of collecting payment for art and taken things back to a more traditional role. Like it or not, it is the result of the ability to digitize information. Make your peace with this system; anything else is just creating problems.

iamgilesbowkett 15y ago

I think you raise a very good point with "how much value does open source provide", but this question: "Why is money the sole metric of wealth." is a) ungrammatical and b) basically a tautology. money is the sole metric of wealth because wealth, quantified, is money. not trying to detract from the point you raise, just getting a bit OCD about logic and grammar.

jjude 15y ago
for me, discretionary time is real wealth
- jlarocco 15y ago
  Arguing against money as a unit of value seems utterly silly to me. The monetary value of "discretionary time" is the amount of money you could have made if you did something else instead.
  - yxhuvud 15y ago
    Value is not the same thing as wealth.
  - barrkel 15y ago
    I have to disagree with you. The price of something is a function of supply and demand; monetary value is determined through price discovery in a market. But not all things are traded, nor are supply and demand perfectly elastic. You will get distorted prices for things through lack of markets and market inefficiencies. More specifically, you can't always do something else revenue-generating instead, and nor would you want to. What's the value of spending time with your children? Can you see how some people would not accept any amount of money to displace all of that time, whereas some others may would (in cases of paid-for adoption / slavery)? I think your outlook is lacking in a specific economic concept: utility.
    - jlarocco 15y ago
      You're kind of missing the point. Obviously, you can't be doing something revenue generating all the time. But for determining the value, that's the way it's done. When you choose to hang out with your kids, you choose that over everything else you could have done. One of the things you could have done is earn money. You decided to give that up, so the monetary cost of doing what you did instead is the money you could have earned but didn't. The market value of your time is, assuming you have a job or charge a consulting fee or whatever, is already determined.
      - barrkel 15y ago
        The market value of anything has two sides - supply and demand. If there is no price level at which a transaction will take place because the supply side values the utility of the commodity higher than any amount of money the demand side offers, then you cannot price it in terms of money. What's the value of the Mona Lisa? You can't just go off and find some other painting(s), look at those prices, and come up with a number. The only way you can discover its market price is by testing the market: i.e. putting it up for sale and inviting bids. A person's time is not substitutable; one hour in the morning is not equivalent to one hour in the middle of the night; and 24 hours of it every day is not equivalent to 24 times the price of 1 hour of it. It's not fungible. This limits your ability to put a monetary price on it.
moonchrome 15y ago
Sorry, English isn't my first language. I'm against focusing on quantifiable wealth exclusively. Eg. reading HN is worth something to me but I didn't pay any money to do it so it's worthless ? Price is only a reflection of market exchange values, it doesn't account for actual value to the consumers. Eg. food is extremely valuable but is also cheap. Price/money is useful but the goal is to create value for consumers, not to suck them dry :) Profit is a market signal/reward for producers but that doesn't mean that it's == to value created for consumer (see my reply above about monopolies, externalities, etc.)
SudarshanP 15y ago
http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
- joering2 15y ago
  good read. I would love Paul to change this part: "A startup is a small company that takes on a hard technical problem."

jlarocco 15y ago

"Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide - take linux for eg. which is used in pretty much every aspect of computing these days - from cell phones to super computers - how much value has it provided to the consumers and allowed developers/researchers/manufacturers to produce ?" What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? "Apply that to every major opensource software effort, things like IDE's, servers, programming languages/compilers. If you were granted a monopoly (like some software companies are, eg. Microsoft with Android patents) would it allow you to make money ? Sure. Would it create extra value ? Nope. " I don't understand the point you're making. Obviously somebody thinks Microsoft's Android patents are valuable, or they wouldn't pay to use them. What do you mean by "would it create extra value?" "Government should never protect the producer." At least we agree on something... "Will the demand go away if you eliminate the IP laws ? No. So the producers will have to figure out how to create new business models that work in a new environment. " That makes no sense. Demand existing isn't enough for something to spring into existence. You make it sound like other people slaving away to create music, movies, and software is your birth right or something.

moonchrome 15y ago
>What unit would you use to measure the value it provides, if not money? I'm against quantifying it at all because, while useful, price is a very limited metric. There are numerous cases where you can increase the transaction sum and achieve 0 value increase, eg. monopolistic pricing in a market with inelastic demand or bad investing (destroying capital) or externalities, etc. >I don't understand the point you're making. Obviously somebody thinks Microsoft's Android patents are valuable, or they wouldn't pay to use them. What do you mean by "would it create extra value?" Nobody is "using them", in fact nobody knows what patents are in question, all that's known is that Microsoft forced different Android manufacturers to pay up for Linux kernel or they take them to court. That's textbook rent seeking. It's likely that Linux devs arrived at the solution independently (since IIRC it's unknown what patents are in question), or would have done so - so you can't make the point that without granting Microsoft a monopoly you wouldn't have Linux kernel. >That makes no sense. Demand existing isn't enough for something to spring into existence. You make it sound like other people slaving away to create music, movies, and software is your birth right or something. People choose to share their creations, once it's copied the copy is no longer their property. They can do whatever they want with their property but knowledge is a non-rivalrous non-excludable good (without infringing on excludable property of others) and creating artificial scarcities to sustain someones business model is ridiculous. Software can translate nicely to a no IP environment by SaaS, NDAs and open-source development financed by consulting. There are various routes for other industries, and many more can be created. I'm not sure about things like pharmaceuticals and maybe other industries have different conditions that would lead to catastrophic results, but that doesn't apply to software and entertainment, bankrupting Disney and Microsoft != bankrupting a company with 10 years of R&D in cancer treatment research.

gaius 15y ago

Why is money the sole metric of wealth. How much value does open source provide Why are feet and miles the metric of distance, can't we just have near and far? More seriously: value has to have a common unit of exchange. The grocery store clerk isn't going to give you your shopping for free because you happened to write some piece of software he isn't even aware of. Money allows value to be stored and transferred. Anything else is just warm fuzzies.

edoloughlin 15y ago
> Why are feet and miles the metric of distance. Sorry to be glib, but as someone who lives with a sane system of units and measurements, I can't help but point out the irony of your statement.
- gaius 15y ago
  I'm in England, but assumed I was replying to an American.
moonchrome 15y ago
But that's not the same thing, value is by definition subjective, and price does not express my valuation or your valuation of the items traded, it just expresses the intersection of supply/demand curve. Value provided by antibiotics is enormous and yet antibiotics are cheap. If we created a law saying that I have a legal monopoly on all antibiotics sales for the next 20 years, the price of antibiotics would go up but it's value/utility wouldn't have to change - we don't need to quantify that statement to evaluate it. It's still very high on your marginal utility list, so you pay more. And the GDP was "increased" (assuming the money spent was from savings/loan that wouldn't be spent in the time measured otherwise) but you aren't any richer, only the producer is, and he got rewarded for monopolistic pricing. Profit is a good incentive when the producer corrected the resource allocation to take capital to a more productive use under the market rules, but it can be perverted if you don't have competition putting pressure, have rent seeking or don't account for negative externalities.
jlangenauer 15y ago
You're confusing use-value (the intrinsic value of something) with exchange-value (what the thing can be exchanged for - aka price). Much of mainstream economics reduces the broad philosophical concept of value to the narrow economic concept of exchange-value or price. And it's not warm and fuzzy: what's the "value" of an unpolluted atmosphere? What's the value of good health? These things generally defy attempts to be priced (though what attempts have been made are risible), yet are fundamental - perhaps even more so than money - to a decent human existence.

davidw 15y ago

Because the people who (#)&#(#^^&% write Linux need money for things like houses, cars, food, health care, school, and so on. That's why money counts.

moonchrome 15y ago
As opposed to people who produce food, or oil, or anything else ? But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? People who wrote Linux found a model that works without forcing other people to pay for it. They do rely on copyright to prevent "free riders" but even without it the financial model is the same, eg. FreeBSD, or any other non copy-left licensed opensource project that has a commercial story. It turns out that without software, hardware is pretty much useless, so even if you can't profit on software directly, you can expect things like OS development to be driven by hardware manufacturers. Money they could earn if they had monopolies on OS kernels would be extremely higher - but market isn't about creating profit for the producers - it's about creating value for the consumer, and consumer would get the value even if he didn't pay for it - so they are getting screwed by rent seeking.
- davidw 15y ago
  > But giving them artificial monopolies is bad - right ? No, not in and of itself. It's a messy compromise. Things like software patents are pretty much just bad. Copyright, in a limited form, seems to be good. Patents on things like medicines can be good in that they pay for research. All of them should be more limited than they currently are, most likely. Linux works, but who's to say it's 'optimal'? Given the huge amount of value it creates, I think relatively little filters back into the development of the system. > consumer would get the value even if he didn't pay for it If no one pays for it, the consumer will not get the value because the developer will have to do something else to make money, and will therefore not produce the code. Luckily, in the case of Linux, some money is funneled back into development, so it's not impossible, it's just much, much more complex than with "intellectual property".
  - moonchrome 15y ago

shoham 15y ago

"Screw the producers" With all respect to you as a person, fuck that. I'm an independent artist and I don't want to be screwed. Consumers tend to get what they want and eat what they're told to. It's small, independent businesses and artists who shape, have shaped, and will always shape the world that you live. you're welcome.

figglesonrails 15y ago
Agreed that consumers can be sheep. Here's the problem though: the (BIG) producers are using various means inaccessible to smaller ones to change laws. And not in small way. And not in a way that benefits consumers. People who get uptight about independent artists having their works digitally copied probably don't realize that this is a good thing. It means they are popular, it means people desire them, it means there is a market just waiting for you. Maybe it is time for a live performance, a tour, a gig, an exhibition, etc. People seem to be so obsessed with selling copies of our work that perhaps they are forgetting what it meant to be an artist before easy, direct, reasonably faithful, copying was even "a thing". Digital art, like code, is too easily copied to be controlled. As a programmer, I've come to terms with this. That doesn't mean that I won't ever make money, it just means that I'd make less than if there was a DRM system for everything that criminalized all of my users (note: users, not customers). And I'm OK with this. Perhaps this not OK with everyone (from the RIAA to the self-important programmer/artist), but I see fighting "pirates" as counterproductive and a waste of resources. I work as a programmer full time. I get paid to do in-house company development. We don't sell any software, we sell physical products. I get paid for my expertise and for my ability to fix issues immediately. I work as an open sourcer whenever-time. My work is free. Not "GPL", not "BSD". Free. As in, go, take it. No copyright asserted. Public domain where exists. WTFPL. Companies can steal my work and make it their own. They can modify it and resell it if they choose. It's financial suicide, right? It is, until you realize that programming is a skill that has to be paid for. Companies can steal and modify code IF AND ONLY IF they have someone to modify it. That means they are paying someone to modify the code. That means a programmer is still getting paid. The question is -- why can't that be me? Maybe I need to advertise myself as being the person you SHOULD hire instead of diverting company resources on acquiring an in-house person who is vaguely familiar with my code. What if they need a fix NOW, not 3 weeks from when I plan to release the next version for them to steal? They can escalate the priority with $$$. There are too many ways to monetize this. This leaves me in an interesting position then. I'm the creator, and I'm getting paid for my services and my knowledge. I'm not getting ANYTHING for my product. Easy conclusion: if your only value is your product, and your product is free (or can, via Copy/Paste, be made free), then you are worthless. If you're an artist, you have it even easier. Music will pretty much always sound better live, pictures of sculptures will never do them justice, a video of a play will never be the same as a live performance where you can see and smell the sweat, and seeing the paint on a framed, rough canvas will never be the same as 1000 DPI print. In a way, this digital revolution has expanded art's ability to spread (unwillingly or not) but has also put a spotlight on novel ways of collecting payment for art and taken things back to a more traditional role. Like it or not, it is the result of the ability to digitize information. Make your peace with this system; anything else is just creating problems.