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I made a mistake by ending my comment with: > The author nails it at the end: > "There have to be other business models that free up the internet for what it

I made a mistake by ending my comment with: > The author nails it at the end: > "There have to be other business models that free up the internet for what it was meant for: free exchange of information.” I'm with you. People need to get paid. I'm only calling for coming up with better business models or go back to the straight up "charge for it" model that the free market system is built on. The bit about "free up the internet for what it was meant for: free exchange of information" is not my point, though we do need to come up with a business model that gets people paid but also let's the information that is the lifeblood of democracy flow freely to all people regardless of ability to pay. You focused on a red herring (though it was my fault to put it there, and I've deleted it, thank you). Now please address my points about the ills of advertising. (P.S. We'll leave to another day the question of whether "It is always subsidized by the rich and powerful" or whether the rich and powerful are in fact subsidized by the people at the bottom, whom you consider the recipients of "charity".)

josh2600 11y ago
Advertising is the worst model, except for all the rest of them. Charging for things, in and of itself, is hard and, on some level, facetious. If all knowledge were known, why would you pay anyone to do anything? It's not clear to me why anyone pays anyone except in the case of information arbitrage. Advertising is a form of explicit information arbitrage, where we convert dollars into attention. Other information arbitrage's include licensing, where we essentially leverage the properties of intellectual property and technical obfuscation to generate returns. The ills of advertising are a consequence of information arbitrage. What most people are railing against is the act of arbitraging what they view as trivial information, and yet this is the essential point that makes a business. We think advertising is evil because it monetizes our attention in a vaguely non-consensual manner, but there are tons of businesses which are valued with respect to attention that are not valued with respect to dollars (think porn as the canonical example). Advertising is simply the easiest way to convert attention into dollars. There are higher friction methods, but their returns are generally commensurately lower. If I could just reach into your bank account and pull a penny out for every minute you use my app, or listen to my song, or read my book, that might be a viable business. Barring that access, advertising appears to be best.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  Dude, you don't really make much sense with all that reductionist gobbledygook. You're quite hung up on the concept of "information arbitrage" in your numerous replies on this thread. You almost come off as a troll but I can see you're serious. There is more to life than "information arbitrage". You cannot reduce people and society to transactions. Get out of your green-ivory tower. Arbitrage the asymmetry between your theories and reality by living a little. Maybe get laid. But if you reduce that too to some sort of arbitrage, you probably won't, unless you're paying for it, which only reinforces your world view. > I find comments like this to be sorta akin to putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "lalalalala I can't hear you!". Ironic.
  - josh2600 11y ago
    1) Telling me to get laid has no place on this forum or in polite society. I have lived plenty. This is relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html 2) Relationships between people are also a study in information arbitrage as the power dynamics between two individuals are never equal unless both parties have intentionally decided to make them equal. 3) If you think the world of business is governed by some other form of arbitrage, please put your theory forward. If you think the world is not governed by arbitrage, please tell me what governs the world. It is not reductionist, it is an attempt at distillation. Reductionist would be to ignore the pertinent facts of the discussion.

josh2600 11y ago

Advertising is the worst model, except for all the rest of them. Charging for things, in and of itself, is hard and, on some level, facetious. If all knowledge were known, why would you pay anyone to do anything? It's not clear to me why anyone pays anyone except in the case of information arbitrage. Advertising is a form of explicit information arbitrage, where we convert dollars into attention. Other information arbitrage's include licensing, where we essentially leverage the properties of intellectual property and technical obfuscation to generate returns. The ills of advertising are a consequence of information arbitrage. What most people are railing against is the act of arbitraging what they view as trivial information, and yet this is the essential point that makes a business. We think advertising is evil because it monetizes our attention in a vaguely non-consensual manner, but there are tons of businesses which are valued with respect to attention that are not valued with respect to dollars (think porn as the canonical example). Advertising is simply the easiest way to convert attention into dollars. There are higher friction methods, but their returns are generally commensurately lower. If I could just reach into your bank account and pull a penny out for every minute you use my app, or listen to my song, or read my book, that might be a viable business. Barring that access, advertising appears to be best.

eevilspock 11y ago
Dude, you don't really make much sense with all that reductionist gobbledygook. You're quite hung up on the concept of "information arbitrage" in your numerous replies on this thread. You almost come off as a troll but I can see you're serious. There is more to life than "information arbitrage". You cannot reduce people and society to transactions. Get out of your green-ivory tower. Arbitrage the asymmetry between your theories and reality by living a little. Maybe get laid. But if you reduce that too to some sort of arbitrage, you probably won't, unless you're paying for it, which only reinforces your world view. > I find comments like this to be sorta akin to putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "lalalalala I can't hear you!". Ironic.
- josh2600 11y ago
  1) Telling me to get laid has no place on this forum or in polite society. I have lived plenty. This is relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html 2) Relationships between people are also a study in information arbitrage as the power dynamics between two individuals are never equal unless both parties have intentionally decided to make them equal. 3) If you think the world of business is governed by some other form of arbitrage, please put your theory forward. If you think the world is not governed by arbitrage, please tell me what governs the world. It is not reductionist, it is an attempt at distillation. Reductionist would be to ignore the pertinent facts of the discussion.