ot-no free lunch
Evan Leibovitch
evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org
Wed Dec 28 17:00:38 UTC 2005
teddy mills wrote:
>That basically means as I understand it, anything that is free, or you
>dont have to work for it, has no or very little value to you.
>
>
Basic Logic 101 states that if your premise is flawed, most conclusions
based on that premise will also be flawed. There are a lot of
assumptions here to be challenged; whether conventional wisdom or
spur-of-the-moment assertions, I agree with very little of what's been
put forward as a foundation for anything to debate.
There is a big difference between a statement being often true and being
a truism. It is a mistake to elevate one's own experiences into
universal constants.
>If you have 10 computers, getting or giving up a computer means very little to you.
>
If you have 10 computer users in your family, or if each serves a unique
purpose, losing one will certainly mean something.
>The DATA on the computer may mean a LOT to you because YOU HAD TO WORK, perhaps a lot, to get that DATA.
>
Then again, if a lot of it was downloaded from other sites, it's not
necessarily difficult to recover.
>A video store owner cares nothing about renting movies. He or she is sick of movies. He/she would rather read a good book.
>
>
Again, true in some cases, but not all. Some people *do* love what they
do and give value to it beyond the pay. As I went through journalism
school, I found that getting one's name in print or one's face on the
air would motivate people to work for far less than their market value.
Media outlets, of course, exploit this vanity.
As for the specific example, my son works part time at Blockbuster
_because_ he loves movies. He can rent 10 movies a week for free and
takes maximum advantage of the perk. His knowledge and ability to talk
about movies makes him more valuable to his employer, but he gets a
genuine thrill about recommending good stuff and keeping people away
from crap.
>Think of anything you have a lot of, or can get for free. Books at the library I dont care about. I can get them anytime! I care about them when they are on hold for me, because I went to the effort of searching, and then waiting, and making the trip to get the book on hold. I had to invest some work, even though the book itself was free.
>
>
I can't disagree more. I use the library because there are books I want
to read but don't need to own. The fact that I don't directly pay for
the borrowing privilege does not make the books themselves less
valuable. The last book I borrowed was a university textbook that was
only available as a $200 hardcover. The book has value to me, but so
does the library offer value to me by making the borrowing facility
available. The fact that the book was on the shelves and didn't needed
to be on hold does not make the book more or less valuable.
>This is what Linux is having a problem with the human reward/value system.
>
>
This only peripherally touches on Linux's problem with the human reward
value system. Indeed, I would suggest that this "problem" is one that
many other fields would covet.
>Is there a way to make people "invest" some time and effort so they can get their "book (ie. linux) for free, but now assign a great deal of value to it? *much like getting a free library book thats on hold ?)
>
>
Bad premise, bad conclusion.
Not only is there a way, but such way is in use. That way is what gave
you Linux and sendmail and so much else of what is in the open source world.
>We can download and install almost 300 different versions of Linux. For the cost of some time, and about $1 in CDs.
>
The value of such technology is not in simply amassing them, it's from
choosing one of those 300 versions, loading it on your computer, and
using it to accomplish something useful to you. There is no real value
realized until then (unless you have a first edition Yggdrasil CD to put
on eBay).
>You can give someone a deck of cards, but you cannot force them to be the Poker World Champion. They have to want to become the World poker champ.
>
Somewhere deeply buried here is an attempt to make some point about
scarcity of resources and the foundation for human incentives. Most of
these points have been made before, and debated at length, including the
very real difference between cost and value.
I'm not meaning to belittle Teddy's opinions, but I'm having a very hard
time finding something substantive with which to agree, disagree or debate.
- Evan
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
More information about the Legacy
mailing list