7 ms·

>Sure, their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value. If it was no

>Sure, their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value. If it was not protected by such a wall, and was not scarce, it would have no monetary value. That's... not artificial scarcity. By definition (and using your own words) it is actual scarcity. A person's performance -- which is more than just their voice reading lines -- is not held back behind some imaginary wall. It's literally limited by the hours in the day, the person's ability to get from place A to place B, etc.; it's not like David Attenborough is a Santa Claus figure and can be in California narrating a documentary and in New York providing some random dude a personal voiceover for his life simultaneously.

Ukv 3y ago
> It's literally limited by the hours in the day If a textbook isn't available because it's still being written by the author, then true, that's the real scarcity of the author's time. But if a textbook is finished but isn't available because effort is put into preventing the information from being freely shared, then that's artificial scarcity. Restricting access subject to payment is currently the most common method for extracting profit to incentivize creation, but it's not the only method and for digital goods it's incredibly inefficient.
- DeIlliad 3y ago
  None of that is relevant to this discussion. We are talking about someone who spent time growing a skill and is charging people who want him to use that skill for whatever they are hiring them for.
  - Ukv 3y ago
    nurple said: "their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value" In my example "their creation" is a textbook, and "legal walls" would be copyright/DMCA. There is also Getty/Universal Music/etc. attempting to enforce artificial scarcity in an area where real scarcity existed (in addition to plenty of artificial scarcity) but is beginning to be overcome.
    - DeIlliad 3y ago
      I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity. I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work.
      - Ukv 3y ago
        > I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity It's allocating resources towards preventing distribution. Maybe you'd agree that it's "direct" artificial scarcity, but believe without that necessary artificial scarcity we'd soon become worse off overall? > I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work. Sure - but you see that is not inherently the same thing as the specific method of profit extraction through requiring payment per access to the book/image/music/..., right? An artist receiving donations or public funding for releasing their work to everyone under a permissive license is still profiting from their work, for example. I'm not necessarily saying you have to agree that alternative methods are currently feasible in all or most scenarios.
        DeIlliad 3y ago
        Sure, I'd agree selling access is not the only method but given that there is a story on the front page of HN about once a week about why open-source maintainers should be paid and how the current model isn't sustainable, in my opinion shows, that relying on donations or public funding is a fool's errand and not a viable alternative.
        Ukv 3y ago
        > given that there is a story on the front page of HN about once a week about why open-source maintainers should be paid and how the current model isn't sustainable Opinion articles on HN notwithstanding, do you not think that free and open-source software has, as a whole, been fairly successful? Moreover, IP law doesn't just apply to art or code - evergreening of medical patents is enforcing artificial scarcity on information that could save lives. Textbooks that could teach millions being restricted to the few thousand that pay is also going to have a huge hidden impact. I don't know if there are viable alternatives for all scenarios, but given how much is on the table if artificial scarcity can be replaced - I think it'd be wrong not to actively try, encouraging any potential alternatives, rather than just being resigned to the idea that this much waste is necessary. At the very least we should oppose the attempts to enforce artificial scarcity in areas that currently managed to do without it.
ryandrake 3y ago
I think what OP is saying is that once AI can replicate these performances (and my coding skills) these things will no longer be scarce. So maybe it's not artificial yet, but it will soon be. Assuming the AI itself doesn't get exclusively owned by companies that implement their own artificial scarcity walls.
nurple 3y ago
Allow me to share my own recent predicament, on which I'm still deeply cogitating, and from where a lot of my own frustration flows. I am a content creator, I write software and build compute systems to run it upon. I was RIF'd last week and, if I'm really conservative, I have a year of expenses in savings. I very much believe in OSS exactly because it allows me, not to tap into a monetary stream, but to overall better our human community by sharing my work. IMO, this is a core and fundamental belief of OSS and it frustrates me to no end to see articles like "OSS is going to die without funding", the two concepts are diametrically opposed. So many, yourself included, have this perverted view of the world where there's no way it could exsist without our current monetary system, no alternative that would be more efficient, more fair, more equitable. I just refuse to believe that's the case. I do not bemoan other content creators their right to generate monetary revenue from their creations, in fact they have no choice. But that doesn't preclude my opinion that it should change. Indeed, what do I do now? I have 1 year to create a revenue stream off of which my family and I can live, or I need to go back to an industry that has corroded my soul in ways that sometimes make me wonder if it's even worth it anymore. The most effective path for me to generate sustained revenue is to abandon my desire to improve humanity by sharing and turn selfishly inward, all or in part, to create a Rube-Goldbergian golem of artificial scarcity around my "content". I have to build a payment system, I have to protect the code at rest and at runtime, I have to build licensing and consider segmentation, I have to market, I have to build systems around revoking access to those who lose their own monetary stream and deal with their data, etc, etc, etc. I know what it takes to build whole companies around systems like this, I've done it from the ground up on more than one ocassion to great success (at least for those who held the keys to the artifical scarcity doors that they paid me to build in front of my own work), and if there's anything that feels like more of a waste of my life than playing technobabel whisperer to clueless middle and upper-management, is considering building something like that again, even if I'm the ultimate keyholder this time. In a world where we do not have to fight like dogs for table scraps, all of this wasted time and effort falls away, and instead all of us content creators who skulk through it for the love of craft, can instead focus solely on the betterment of our community as a whole. We live in a world with the resources to realize a reality like this, but IMO we have all been blinded by a masterful twisting of our inbuilt self-preservation instinct by the ultimate farce in artifical scarcity: money.

Ukv 3y ago

> It's literally limited by the hours in the day If a textbook isn't available because it's still being written by the author, then true, that's the real scarcity of the author's time. But if a textbook is finished but isn't available because effort is put into preventing the information from being freely shared, then that's artificial scarcity. Restricting access subject to payment is currently the most common method for extracting profit to incentivize creation, but it's not the only method and for digital goods it's incredibly inefficient.

DeIlliad 3y ago
None of that is relevant to this discussion. We are talking about someone who spent time growing a skill and is charging people who want him to use that skill for whatever they are hiring them for.
- Ukv 3y ago
  nurple said: "their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value" In my example "their creation" is a textbook, and "legal walls" would be copyright/DMCA. There is also Getty/Universal Music/etc. attempting to enforce artificial scarcity in an area where real scarcity existed (in addition to plenty of artificial scarcity) but is beginning to be overcome.
  - DeIlliad 3y ago
    I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity. I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work.
    - Ukv 3y ago
      > I don't see copyright or a record label as artificial scarcity It's allocating resources towards preventing distribution. Maybe you'd agree that it's "direct" artificial scarcity, but believe without that necessary artificial scarcity we'd soon become worse off overall? > I think the artist should have every right to profit from their work. Sure - but you see that is not inherently the same thing as the specific method of profit extraction through requiring payment per access to the book/image/music/..., right? An artist receiving donations or public funding for releasing their work to everyone under a permissive license is still profiting from their work, for example. I'm not necessarily saying you have to agree that alternative methods are currently feasible in all or most scenarios.
      - DeIlliad 3y ago
        Sure, I'd agree selling access is not the only method but given that there is a story on the front page of HN about once a week about why open-source maintainers should be paid and how the current model isn't sustainable, in my opinion shows, that relying on donations or public funding is a fool's errand and not a viable alternative.
        Ukv 3y ago
        > given that there is a story on the front page of HN about once a week about why open-source maintainers should be paid and how the current model isn't sustainable Opinion articles on HN notwithstanding, do you not think that free and open-source software has, as a whole, been fairly successful? Moreover, IP law doesn't just apply to art or code - evergreening of medical patents is enforcing artificial scarcity on information that could save lives. Textbooks that could teach millions being restricted to the few thousand that pay is also going to have a huge hidden impact. I don't know if there are viable alternatives for all scenarios, but given how much is on the table if artificial scarcity can be replaced - I think it'd be wrong not to actively try, encouraging any potential alternatives, rather than just being resigned to the idea that this much waste is necessary. At the very least we should oppose the attempts to enforce artificial scarcity in areas that currently managed to do without it.

ryandrake 3y ago

I think what OP is saying is that once AI can replicate these performances (and my coding skills) these things will no longer be scarce. So maybe it's not artificial yet, but it will soon be. Assuming the AI itself doesn't get exclusively owned by companies that implement their own artificial scarcity walls.

nurple 3y ago

Allow me to share my own recent predicament, on which I'm still deeply cogitating, and from where a lot of my own frustration flows. I am a content creator, I write software and build compute systems to run it upon. I was RIF'd last week and, if I'm really conservative, I have a year of expenses in savings. I very much believe in OSS exactly because it allows me, not to tap into a monetary stream, but to overall better our human community by sharing my work. IMO, this is a core and fundamental belief of OSS and it frustrates me to no end to see articles like "OSS is going to die without funding", the two concepts are diametrically opposed. So many, yourself included, have this perverted view of the world where there's no way it could exsist without our current monetary system, no alternative that would be more efficient, more fair, more equitable. I just refuse to believe that's the case. I do not bemoan other content creators their right to generate monetary revenue from their creations, in fact they have no choice. But that doesn't preclude my opinion that it should change. Indeed, what do I do now? I have 1 year to create a revenue stream off of which my family and I can live, or I need to go back to an industry that has corroded my soul in ways that sometimes make me wonder if it's even worth it anymore. The most effective path for me to generate sustained revenue is to abandon my desire to improve humanity by sharing and turn selfishly inward, all or in part, to create a Rube-Goldbergian golem of artificial scarcity around my "content". I have to build a payment system, I have to protect the code at rest and at runtime, I have to build licensing and consider segmentation, I have to market, I have to build systems around revoking access to those who lose their own monetary stream and deal with their data, etc, etc, etc. I know what it takes to build whole companies around systems like this, I've done it from the ground up on more than one ocassion to great success (at least for those who held the keys to the artifical scarcity doors that they paid me to build in front of my own work), and if there's anything that feels like more of a waste of my life than playing technobabel whisperer to clueless middle and upper-management, is considering building something like that again, even if I'm the ultimate keyholder this time. In a world where we do not have to fight like dogs for table scraps, all of this wasted time and effort falls away, and instead all of us content creators who skulk through it for the love of craft, can instead focus solely on the betterment of our community as a whole. We live in a world with the resources to realize a reality like this, but IMO we have all been blinded by a masterful twisting of our inbuilt self-preservation instinct by the ultimate farce in artifical scarcity: money.