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It's much better when running a Tor node is a decision that is evaluated in an economic reference frame. There are very few tor nodes currently because there s

by VMG 12y ago

It's much better when running a Tor node is a decision that is evaluated in an economic reference frame. There are very few tor nodes currently because there societal incentive is very low. If you can actually start making money off it, many more people will start doing it. It's a concept so basic I'm wondering how one can miss it. And the paper you linked to not applicable to the situation at all.

vidarh 12y ago
> It's much better when running a Tor node is a decision that is evaluated in an economic reference frame. That may be true if the economic incentives available are sufficiently strong, but that is not a given.
- VMG 12y ago
  Even when the reward is tiny, people will try to optimize the process as much as possible. It would also be great if people provided internet content out of altruism and didn't want any compensation for it, but it doesn't work that way. A lot of websites can only survive by putting up web-ads, even if the compensation is pretty low.
  - sp332 12y ago
    That's not a given. Here's an example: A daycare center was getting tired of parents not picking their kids up on time. So they implemented a fee - something small like $5 for late pickup. The result is that even more parents left their kids late! The social pressure of not annoying the daycare employees had been replaced with a monetary transaction: $5 for late pickup, not a bad deal. If you start paying people tiny amounts of money to run a Tor relay, they will calculate that it's not worth it and they will stop doing it.
    - masomenos 12y ago
      The second doesn't follow from the first. At most, you could say that people MAY calculate that running a tor relay is no longer worth it, but you could also say that without bringing up the (almost completely unrelated) daycare example.
    - gnarbarian 12y ago
      The "problem" with the daycare is simply that they needed to either raise their prices or hire more employees willing to work a few extra hours to get overtime pay. This isn't a problem at all, they have actually found another source of revenue for their company with a service their customers value and are willing to pay for. Of all places where I would expect someone to be oblivious to this I find the fact that it's on a site focused on entrepreneurship and nurturing start ups to become profitable hilariously ironic.
      - sp332 12y ago
        The fee wasn't supposed to be a price, it was supposed to be an additional incentive to show up on time. But instead it replaced the previous incentive instead of adding to it.
        gnarbarian 12y ago
        Then they simply need to increase the fee until leaving their kids there is not worth it to them. This stuff is economics 101. Raise the price and the demand for being late will decrease. They have literally blundered their way into a source of revenue, fail to see it as an opportunity and are resentful of it. If the fee wasn't supposed to be a price then they shouldn't have made it a price. If they really hate money as much as it sounds they could instead give tardy parents 3 strikes before banning them from the daycare altogether.
        dllthomas 12y ago
        Strictly, economics 101 says that if you raise the price the quantity demanded will decrease. Demand is a curve.
        gnarbarian 12y ago
        Yes, it has been about 13 years since I took econ. Since children are integers and are in daycare in quantities between 1 and 30ish per employee it's possible to increase the price to the point where it either covers the cost of the employee's OT or the quantity of demand is zero.
    - VMG 12y ago
      Again, that paper is interesting because in that specific case the results were counter-intuitive. In the overwhelming majority of instance a financial reward is an incentive. Parking fines work because people respond more strongly to the monetary incentive than to stern looks. Paying doctors high wages works because monetary incentives work better than handshakes from patients. You don't get a paper published for that, because it's obvious.
      - sp332 12y ago
        And what's interesting about this experiment is that it's not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over and over again, for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators -- if you do this, then you get that -- work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don't work or, often, they do harm. This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript I'm linking to a TED talk transcript because it makes the point better than I can.
        VMG 12y ago
        Running a TOR node is not what I would call a "creative endeavor". It consumes electricity and bandwidth, and is a legal risk if it is an exit node.
      - meowface 12y ago
        >In the overwhelming majority of instance a financial reward is an incentive. I don't believe this is true. I know numerous studies have shown that, for example, software developers enjoy their work less and feel less in control of it the more they are paid to work on it. This case does not necessarily apply to Tor nodes, since one does not really do any persistent "work" when running one. But the concept of monetary incentive is definitely not nearly as shallow as you make it out to be.
        Nevermark 12y ago
        I think you may be misinterpreting the studies. Generally speaking, there are very few people on the planet that are demoralized by being paid a lot. Demoralization can happen when the social situation emphasizes pay as the only reward. The problem isn't that the pay is not an incentive, but the lack of social rewards acts as a disincentive. If I tell you that I love the quality of the lemonade you are making for customers and I want to give you a raise so you will be happy to work longer hours making such great lemonade you will feel very appreciated and motivated. If in the exact same situation I tell you that we need more lemonade and I know you don't want to work more but I am going to give you money so you need to do it, you are going to feel very differently. Its not that the money wouldn't have been an incentive, its that it is presented as if that is all you care about, which means your personal character and work ethic are being ignored. Very demoralizing.
    - Spooky23 12y ago
      Where's that daycare? The market rate in my area is $15 for each 10 minute increment, with contract termination after a certain number of incidents.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
cornholio 12y ago
Specifically, while there is a strong social pressure involved when dealing with your children's tutors, there is almost none when dealing with complete anonymous people on the internet, many of which are likely to be criminals. I would like to see an attempt to quantify the two effects, but I would venture to say that switching from an altruistic motivation to a financial motivation will increase the bandwidth available by orders of magnitude. For example, compare private trackers with public trackers.
gnarbarian 12y ago
Using market forces to incentivise this is a great idea. Running a node incurs a quantifiable cost in terms of bandwidth, causes authorities to watch you more closely, and exposes you to a risk of litigation over the content you are relaying. Ideals regarding privacy, the freedom of information, and anonymity aren't enough for most people to surmount the risk and cost of operating one. As it stands I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of nodes were operated by various national intelligence agencies simply because they have vastly more incentive to do so than anyone else. Potentially being able to profit from this changes things dramatically and gives people who wouldn't consider themselves stakeholders actual reason to 'sell' their bandwidth to the tor network.
dllthomas 12y ago
The parent explicitly assumed that running a tor node would not wind up profitable. If that's true, then no one is going to do it for purely economic reasons (even if this makes the economic situation better) and this might be harmful. If that's not true, then certainly we'll see more people start doing it.
shazow 12y ago
+1. In fact, it would probably be better if the whole idea of Tor was further removed from prosocial values. This will help disassociate the idea that contributing to and using Tor is for people who have something to hide, and turn it into an economic decision. At the very least, if the economics of using Tor were closer to neutral. Right now it costs money to run a Tor relay, would be nice if it was self-funded.

by VMG 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

> It's much better when running a Tor node is a decision that is evaluated in an economic reference frame. That may be true if the economic incentives available are sufficiently strong, but that is not a given.

VMG 12y ago
Even when the reward is tiny, people will try to optimize the process as much as possible. It would also be great if people provided internet content out of altruism and didn't want any compensation for it, but it doesn't work that way. A lot of websites can only survive by putting up web-ads, even if the compensation is pretty low.
- sp332 12y ago
  That's not a given. Here's an example: A daycare center was getting tired of parents not picking their kids up on time. So they implemented a fee - something small like $5 for late pickup. The result is that even more parents left their kids late! The social pressure of not annoying the daycare employees had been replaced with a monetary transaction: $5 for late pickup, not a bad deal. If you start paying people tiny amounts of money to run a Tor relay, they will calculate that it's not worth it and they will stop doing it.
  - masomenos 12y ago
    The second doesn't follow from the first. At most, you could say that people MAY calculate that running a tor relay is no longer worth it, but you could also say that without bringing up the (almost completely unrelated) daycare example.
  - gnarbarian 12y ago
    The "problem" with the daycare is simply that they needed to either raise their prices or hire more employees willing to work a few extra hours to get overtime pay. This isn't a problem at all, they have actually found another source of revenue for their company with a service their customers value and are willing to pay for. Of all places where I would expect someone to be oblivious to this I find the fact that it's on a site focused on entrepreneurship and nurturing start ups to become profitable hilariously ironic.
    - sp332 12y ago
      The fee wasn't supposed to be a price, it was supposed to be an additional incentive to show up on time. But instead it replaced the previous incentive instead of adding to it.
      - gnarbarian 12y ago
        Then they simply need to increase the fee until leaving their kids there is not worth it to them. This stuff is economics 101. Raise the price and the demand for being late will decrease. They have literally blundered their way into a source of revenue, fail to see it as an opportunity and are resentful of it. If the fee wasn't supposed to be a price then they shouldn't have made it a price. If they really hate money as much as it sounds they could instead give tardy parents 3 strikes before banning them from the daycare altogether.
        dllthomas 12y ago
        Strictly, economics 101 says that if you raise the price the quantity demanded will decrease. Demand is a curve.
        gnarbarian 12y ago
        Yes, it has been about 13 years since I took econ. Since children are integers and are in daycare in quantities between 1 and 30ish per employee it's possible to increase the price to the point where it either covers the cost of the employee's OT or the quantity of demand is zero.
  - VMG 12y ago
    Again, that paper is interesting because in that specific case the results were counter-intuitive. In the overwhelming majority of instance a financial reward is an incentive. Parking fines work because people respond more strongly to the monetary incentive than to stern looks. Paying doctors high wages works because monetary incentives work better than handshakes from patients. You don't get a paper published for that, because it's obvious.
    - sp332 12y ago
      And what's interesting about this experiment is that it's not an aberration. This has been replicated over and over and over again, for nearly 40 years. These contingent motivators -- if you do this, then you get that -- work in some circumstances. But for a lot of tasks, they actually either don't work or, often, they do harm. This is one of the most robust findings in social science, and also one of the most ignored. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/transcript I'm linking to a TED talk transcript because it makes the point better than I can.
      - VMG 12y ago
        Running a TOR node is not what I would call a "creative endeavor". It consumes electricity and bandwidth, and is a legal risk if it is an exit node.
    - meowface 12y ago
      >In the overwhelming majority of instance a financial reward is an incentive. I don't believe this is true. I know numerous studies have shown that, for example, software developers enjoy their work less and feel less in control of it the more they are paid to work on it. This case does not necessarily apply to Tor nodes, since one does not really do any persistent "work" when running one. But the concept of monetary incentive is definitely not nearly as shallow as you make it out to be.
      - Nevermark 12y ago
        I think you may be misinterpreting the studies. Generally speaking, there are very few people on the planet that are demoralized by being paid a lot. Demoralization can happen when the social situation emphasizes pay as the only reward. The problem isn't that the pay is not an incentive, but the lack of social rewards acts as a disincentive. If I tell you that I love the quality of the lemonade you are making for customers and I want to give you a raise so you will be happy to work longer hours making such great lemonade you will feel very appreciated and motivated. If in the exact same situation I tell you that we need more lemonade and I know you don't want to work more but I am going to give you money so you need to do it, you are going to feel very differently. Its not that the money wouldn't have been an incentive, its that it is presented as if that is all you care about, which means your personal character and work ethic are being ignored. Very demoralizing.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    Where's that daycare? The market rate in my area is $15 for each 10 minute increment, with contract termination after a certain number of incidents.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]

cornholio 12y ago

Specifically, while there is a strong social pressure involved when dealing with your children's tutors, there is almost none when dealing with complete anonymous people on the internet, many of which are likely to be criminals. I would like to see an attempt to quantify the two effects, but I would venture to say that switching from an altruistic motivation to a financial motivation will increase the bandwidth available by orders of magnitude. For example, compare private trackers with public trackers.

gnarbarian 12y ago

Using market forces to incentivise this is a great idea. Running a node incurs a quantifiable cost in terms of bandwidth, causes authorities to watch you more closely, and exposes you to a risk of litigation over the content you are relaying. Ideals regarding privacy, the freedom of information, and anonymity aren't enough for most people to surmount the risk and cost of operating one. As it stands I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of nodes were operated by various national intelligence agencies simply because they have vastly more incentive to do so than anyone else. Potentially being able to profit from this changes things dramatically and gives people who wouldn't consider themselves stakeholders actual reason to 'sell' their bandwidth to the tor network.

dllthomas 12y ago

The parent explicitly assumed that running a tor node would not wind up profitable. If that's true, then no one is going to do it for purely economic reasons (even if this makes the economic situation better) and this might be harmful. If that's not true, then certainly we'll see more people start doing it.

shazow 12y ago

+1. In fact, it would probably be better if the whole idea of Tor was further removed from prosocial values. This will help disassociate the idea that contributing to and using Tor is for people who have something to hide, and turn it into an economic decision. At the very least, if the economics of using Tor were closer to neutral. Right now it costs money to run a Tor relay, would be nice if it was self-funded.