
Better Than Free (2008) - eitland
https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/
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kwhitefoot
Most of the supposed better than free ideas apply to a very small niche
population. Most people, myself included, are not especially concerned about
authenticity for instance; I don't care when something was created and am
certainly not interested in getting something hours or days before the rest of
the world. As for paying the creator, well in a capitalist world creators are
ten a penny and getting cheaper, not to mention that the world is awash with
interesting, useful, and beautiful stuff that already exists.

In many respects we are already in a post-scarcity world not that it will make
any difference to the vast majority of creative people; they will not be any
poorer than they have always been.

~~~
mathgeek
One of the things about selling exclusivity or “first in line” is that you
only need a critical mass of your consumers/users to crave it in order to be
successful. An example being that people still preorder digital goods like
games and movies even when there are no other incentives offered. There’s also
a degree of “I’m going to forget and miss out” for some folks.

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dang
Discussed a bit at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=108559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=108559)

More in 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14431233)

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lozf
For context this dates from Jan 2008.

~~~
dang
Added. Thanks!

