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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) ungramm
by 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 agofor me, discretionary time is real wealth
- jlarocco 15y agoArguing 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 agoValue is not the same thing as wealth.
- barrkel 15y agoI 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 agoYou'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 agoThe 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 agoSorry, 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 agohttp://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
- joering2 15y agogood read. I would love Paul to change this part: "A startup is a small company that takes on a hard technical problem."