

Scott Adams: Giving Stuff Away on the Internet - emfle
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119388143439778613-lMyQjAxMDE3OTAzMTgwODExWj.html
"So I've been watching with great interest as the band "Radiohead" pursues its experiment with pay-what-you-want downloads on the Internet. In the near term, the goodwill has inspired lots of people to pay. But I suspect many of them are placing a bet that paying a few bucks now will inspire all of their favorite bands to offer similar deals. That's when the market value of music will approach zero."

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mattmaroon
I've been arguing for a very long time against people who think free is a
possible business model for art forms. Voluntary payments/micropayments will
never work.

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dood
I would argue that micropayments will work one day: people are ready and
willing to make micropayments, the barrier is the cognitive cost of making the
payment. If there were some well-established way to give money with a couple
of clicks and zero thought, I think a lot of people would do it.

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mattmaroon
Yeah, I'm not buying it. There's no evidence pointing to that whatsoever, and
it seems silly to assume that, by default, people will pay for something they
didn't have to. That's not human nature. You'd have to assume the opposite
until proven otherwise.

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dood
I'm not assuming everyone will pay, just a large enough fraction to be
significant for moderately popular sites. I think (hope?) you underestimate
human nature, or at least the powers of fandom, guilt, and some occasional
generosity.

If this sort of thing does take off, I imagine it would work best with the
sorts of things people are passionate about, and especially would want to
support continuing development; open source software, tutorials/textbooks,
music, fiction, webcomics, that sort of thing.

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emfle
The concept of _reciprocity_ may very well be hardcoded in human nature,
because it is such an effective strategy.

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mattmaroon
I don't think so. Humans typically display that behavior in person, but not
behind each other's backs. Humans aren't hard coded to actually be fair,
they're only hard coded to give that appearance.

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pg
I think most people feel bad when they do something mean and good when they do
something virtuous, even when no one is watching. It's hard to say whether
it's nature or nurture, but it's definitely there.

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jey
_"It's hard to say whether it's nature or nurture ..."_

The (extremely fascinating) field of evolutionary psychology gives some pretty
convincing arguments that our brains are hard-wired for reciprocal altruism.
Hard-wiring of reciprocal altruism in the form of emotions like guilt and
gratitude is one of the main reasons humans can form these large and mostly
stable social structures.

EvPsych basically makes one important observation and asks the natural
question leading from it: Just like our eyes and hands, our minds have also
been developed in response to evolutionary pressures. What were these
pressures and how do they account for the features we see in ourselves, like
language, love, laughter, crying, etc?

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Mistone
i think its a fascinating problem and don't feel current options (adverts or
donations) are addressing. tim orielly points out that there is not a one size
fits all solution. when the content/media/art is the product it becomes
increasingly more important than if your a casual blogger.

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tlrobinson
wikipedia?

<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising>

