ot-no free lunch

[Christopher Browne]

On 12/28/05, Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 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.

Economics is quite another matter.  Moreover, the move from
microeconomics (looking at individual transactions) to macroeconomics
(the greater "shape of the economy") is more complex, still.

The example of the 10 computers is a pretty good one, actually.  The
first computer is of great value.  Subsequent ones are likely to be of
less value; if I bought a few more computers for use at home without
some substantial purpose in mind, the last few will be of pretty
limited value, to me.

At that point, it normally doesn't make sense for me to spend the
money to buy those extra computers.  They aren't worth as much, to me,
in terms of the marginal utility I'll get out of them, than their
cost.  Someone else should presumably buy them instead, someone that
needs them more badly than I.

> 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.

Particularly when one's experiences are more like "economic
transactions," where millions of varying transactions are continually
taking place.

> >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 first few computers are likely to be of vital value.  If you're
not using them to capacity, the later ones are probably a lot less
valuable, possibly not valuable at all.


> >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.

The trouble is one whose root may be more attainable if we look at it
from the perspective of economics.

The first copy of a piece of computer software tends to be exceedingly
costly, as there is likely to be considerable development effort.

When distributed under traditional proprietary arrangements, either:

a) The user pays for the bespoke software that they paid to have developed, or

b) Each users pays a licensing fee for access to their copy.

With free software, someone that values having the software developed
pays for it to get produced, and then numerous users can freely use it
without paying further.

People have a strange habit of considering values of things to be
somehow proportional to the price they pay for them.  There are many
evidences out there that this is nonsense, but they still do so.

Furthermore, people are downright Stupidly Irrational when it gets to
the notion of "sunk costs."  Once they have spent money that can't be
returned, it is rational to *IGNORE* that sort of cost.  But people
are stupid that way, and will stay with things that they threw money
at based on the misperception that they are trying to "get value on
their investment."

> >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.

It's not totally a bad question.  The better question is how to get
people to invest in getting free software produced.  If they invest in
it, that whole stupidity about "sunk costs" will suck them into
committing to it :-).

How to get it to work is a toughie.  Throwing money at projects to try
to get something to stick is never guaranteed to work out.  The
company I work for invested quite a bit of money in a OSS project this
year, only to discover that what was being attempted couldn't work. 
Alas, you can't predict these things ahead of time; sometimes you have
to do some work to figure out what *won't* work.

My own keen "Holiday project" is to send some small gifts to encourage
some developers.  That'll be more at the level of morale boosting than
of true economic support.


> 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.

There's a scarcity of time, and that limits peoples' ability to try
things out.  Jamie Zawinski (an early Netscape employee, involved with
writing Lucid Emacs which is now XEmacs, author of xscreensaver, and
other stuff) says that "Linux is only free if your time has no value."

He's got a point; figuring out how to use Linux and such does have a
cost in terms of devoting time to figure it out, particularly when
documentation is fragmentary, wrong, or non-existent, as is all too
common.
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