the class of people who own the world and control all the assets may finally begin to see the error of their ways
Their ways? Arianna Huffington didn't cause the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted. She also didn't inherit HuffPo so all that talk about socialism and inheritance tax is just more signalling on the author's part. Which is why they chose him.
If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don't need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you're going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you.[1]
the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted
To be fair, some people write for free to learn things, share things, and spread knowledge. That's why I started a blog. And virtually all professors, who produce work for journals, don't get paid directly via their writing, but rather via their home institution, and sometimes other means (like grants).
Universities are different than the HuffPo, but the point is still important.
"...people willing to write for free to stroke their ego..."
Or to get exposure, which is a requirement for making a living in any creative endeavour.
Note: Huffington exposure isn't worth much, but neither is exposure from writing articles in most journalism outlets. That doesn't prevent every last writer from having a list of "published in Time, Newsweek, Mr. Peabody's Literary Conglomeration,...and the Washington Post" in their brag paragraph.
But she is causing it, as are people selling fixie bikes, and barbers who give the bros their haircuts. It's funny that people don't call her Huffington more often, as if she were engaged in something more noble than say Hefner.
This is the basic model of a lot of similar companies. Get people to provide content for free, then profit from control over the repository. If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day. They're one step up from the sites that auto-generate product reviews or display reformatted Wikipedia articles.
If it weren't for copyright protections, HuffPo and its ilk would just copy your blog posts verbatim and call it a day.
They pretty much do anyway. Anything saying "CNN has reported..." is basically just a rewrite of the existing CNN article, to just enough of an extent that they avoid copyright issues. Do slightly better SEO (easy because huffingtonpost.com is more popular than cnn.com) and you get all the clicks. The organisation that spent money on the original reporting gets nothing. Yay.
I've been kicking around the idea of a plugin for FF or Chrome to root the source out of a few popular reblog sites (HuffPuff, Upworthy etc) as they usually link it.
Rarely do the reblog sites add much other than op-ed commentary to original news item and it'd save me time when someone sends me a link to a news item to root out the source.
I agree with the writer's points that HuffPo seems like a pretty bad deal for the writer; but honestly how different is that from HN? Ignoring the fact that HN makes no money; the product they offer is obviously desirable or people would stop visiting. Therefore, it is worth something.
A large portion of the top content on HN comes from peoples' personal blogs. While these blogs often run ads, I seriously doubt those ads provide much income beyond covering the hosting bills. So people are obviously willing to write for free.
HuffPo realized there was a market opportunity in connecting people who were writing for free anyway with an audience for their content. I guess my biggest problem with their business model is that the offer seems like a freelance writing gig and could obviously dupe someone who doesn't ask the right questions.
So in the end I don't really have a problem with their business model, but their approach to sourcing content seems a bit disingenuous. If they were more up-front about the lack of payment, I would have less of a problem with this.
The difference is that no one from HN is asking you to write something. It's not the same "I wrote this thing because I wanted to and I'm letting HN/HuffPo link/mirror on their site" and "You asked me to write something for you, so you can win more money, and I'm doing it for free". One is an article for you, the other one is work for another person.
What are Huffington Post's intellectual property terms? That could be a big distinction between Huffington Post and HN.
On HN, nobody signs over any IP, nor does the copyright holder necessarily grant a license of any sort. (If you doubt that, consider the fact that I can submit anyone's URL to HN. So submitters aren't assumed to have any authority over the IP.)
With periodicals, though, there usually is a contract with writers where rights are assigned to the publisher. Maybe the copyright, maybe just a license. There's usually something along those lines.
So the difference between HN and such periodicals (which may or may not include HuffPo) is the difference between merely sharing a link and signing over IP rights.
"With periodicals, though, there usually is a contract with writers where rights are assigned to the publisher. Maybe the copyright, maybe just a license. There's usually something along those lines."
Publications usually allow the writer to retain IP ownership, but with an exclusive license granted to the publication for a certain period of time. For instance, "Joe Writer agrees to license to PublicationMagazine the exclusive worldwide rights to the work for a period of N days." Depending on the contract, many publications will also want the right to sublicense or syndicate the work during their license period, but will compensate the writer X% of syndication revenues.
I've never written for HuffPo, and I have no idea how their process works. I do, however, think it's a raw deal for any writer to contribute for free on an ongoing basis to a successful, for-profit publication. Not that there's anything illegal or immoral about that, per se. It's just that the writer is selling his time and product very short. Plenty of successful, respectable publications will pay a writer for his work. It won't be much; journalism isn't exactly renowned as a path to material riches. But at least it'll be something.
Good to know. In that case, probably the biggest distinction between HuffPo and HN is that HuffPo displays the content on their own site. For some writers, that might be a plus. For others, it might be a minus.
I've heard some professional writers say you should rarely or ever publish anything (e.g. a blog post) without remuneration. Not because it's wrong to do so, but because they consider it bad business. If they're right, I don't know if that should affect our judgment of a publisher who actively solicits unpaid submissions. Maybe the writers are undervaluing themselves, but then maybe the publisher isn't to blame for that.
I'm not exactly sure how HuffPo works, but my understanding was that they host, display, and provide the content as their own. Which is completely different from HN, which simply LINKS to the content itself. So the author/whoever is free to generate their own ad revenue or whatever else they'd like from their content. And HN does none of that.
Yes; but the point is that HN has value. They just choose not to monetize it through ads. It's not noble or anything; it just means that YC feels HN is more valuable as a platform for getting out info about their companies without ads.
The same guy contacted me and I've submitted a couple of pieces since. He was very upfront and clear about what was being offered, i.e. submit the things you're writing anyway to us, and subject to editorial discretion they may be featured on some hugely-trafficked section, else just archived on "the blog".
For doing this they offer you a small profile with various links: to your amazon books, your website, twitter, an RSS feed as well as the "exposure" and (ever decreasing in value) bragging rights of writing (well, blogging) for the Huffington Post. You give them doctored versions of the blog posts you're writing anyway with a slight risk of hurting your own SEO.
I think everyone is privy to their business model but IMO it's win-win unless you're in a position where others are already keen to pay for your work.
If you look from the right angle everything it's win-win, the point is how much one win is worth compared to the other. Your boss tells you he would totally give you money if you do some boring chores he doesn't want to do, it's win-win. But if he gives you $1000 and then proceeds to make 10 times that with the product of your work, then it's actually a WIN-win for him.
I don't think this is a strong argument, how is everything win-win? What if I get hit by a car on the way home, is that win-win?Likewise getting fair compensation for a task, do boring/hard chores get money, isn't win-win it's zero-sum.
Re: the last sentence, welcome to capitalism where we don't typically evenly share out the earnings from anything.
Not related,but I would like to mention this regardless:
>>No party will suggest the rational solutions: if hard work makes us rich, let’s tax inheritance at 85%, so the children of rich men have to work hard too. But no: that would never do
I never understood this argument. I am not rich by any means,but why would my children have to pay 85% on things that I want to leave them?? It's idiotic - I worked hard to earn those things,why would the government want 85% of their value?? On what basis and logical reason? To make my children "less lazy" by doing so?? They can mind their own children - I will mind mine.
> but why would my children have to pay 85% on things that I want to leave them?? It's idiotic.
No, it's not idiotic. It's income to them they receive without working, it should be taxed higher because those who work for their money should not be taxed higher than those who simply have it given to them.
> I worked hard to earn those things,why would the government want 85% of their value??
Yes, and that's yours, not your children's. The only person you can give large sums of money to tax free is your spouse; to everyone else, that's new income and it should be taxed, and large sums should be taxed heavily because inherited wealth is anathema to democracy.
You can't have a functioning democracy and allow capital accumulation to the elite in such large sums that their children become kings with the power to buy politicians and affect law without having the benefit of having worked for that money and really understanding what it means to not be wealthy.
> On what basis and logical reason? To make my children "less lazy" by doing so??
No, to stop them from destroying society.
> They can mind their own children - I will mind mine.
You live in a community and it's not all about you and yours; try not thinking about yourself so much and look at the bigger picture. Inherited wealth is bad for society, earned wealth is good for society. You earned your money, keep it; your children should earn their own on their own.
>>It's income to them they receive without working, it should be taxed higher because those who work for their money should not be taxed higher than those who simply have it given to them.
This literally does not make any sense. I paid tax on all those things. My children are using the benefits of my work, that is correct - but I paid my duties for the money I made.
>> without having the benefit of having worked for that money and really understanding what it means to not be wealthy.
So why don't we send everyone for a mandatory work in orphanages or homeless shelters for a couple months,if its about teaching people a lesson? Since when is it the governments job to make people " understand what it means to not be wealthy."?
>>inherited wealth is anathema to democracy.
So why don't we ban it altogether? Once you hit 18 years of age, you are given a government-built apartament, $1000 pocket money, and off you go, enjoy democracy. Meanwhile, if you die, all your possessions can go to the government who will make sure that your wealth is redistributed to the greatest benefit of the society. Sounds like the right kind of democracy to me.
Consider: There may be other alternatives that fall between the extremes of "My kids get all the free money I can give them!" and "The government should confiscate all possessions and give everyone a state-sponsored apartment."
Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Anything in between doesn't make sense as it it completely arbitrary. Why 10%? Or 60%? Or 85%? If you support the notion that children should work for themselves, then don't let them inherit anything from their parents - in which case, the government has to provide at least a place to live in. If you don't support the notion of taxing inheritance(like I do) then you should support the idea of inheritance tax being 0. Again - no tax is being evaded here. A person who made that money/bought those things already paid the tax on them. The government got their share in this already.
> Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax
Ok, well, I think that's a ludicrous position to take, and your views on this topic are unreasonable. All taxes are "completely arbitrary" in some sense. They're the result of compromises, political and economic pressures, and expressions of the values of a society.
I agree with the parent comment that estates in excess of some amount (maybe one or two million dollars, inflation-indexed) should be taxed at an extremely high rate to discourage the development of aristocratic dynasties.
> Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax.
Then you need to mature your point of view because the world isn't so absurdly simple and black and white.
No thinking person can look at this country (U.S.) today and say accumulated wealth isn't causing a whole host of problems. The wealth inequality in this country is bad and needs to be addressed. The rich are out of control.
Yeah but taxes aren't why. Its the rigged financial markets that have swiftly vacuumed up all the money and put it into the hands of those that - guess what - handle money.
There is no one why, there's a host of things that allow wealth accumulation and they all need to be tackled, but inherited wealth produces dangerous people: aristocrats who have no idea what it means to work and no appreciation for those that do, and that cannot be ignored.
And without all that wealth accumulation, the financial markets wouldn't be rigged. They were rigged by the wealthy buying politicians to get the laws they like passed. The markets are a symptom of the problem, they aren't the problem itself; accumulated wealth is the problem.
Nope, that's just treating a symptom; they'd just immediately break the market again and that's putting aside the point that they own your politicians and simply wouldn't allow you to fix it. Until you deal with severe wealth accumulation, nothing else matters and yes it is actionable. The French lopped off a few heads, it worked.
> Yes, for me it's either no inheritance tax, or 100% inheritance tax. Anything in between doesn't make sense as it it completely arbitrary.
The distinction between inheritances and other forms of income in tax treatment is at least as arbitrary. If we tax income in general, why should income from inheritances be treated specially?
None of those avoid taxes; the point of the tax isn't necessarily to collect the money, but to force the person who made it to spend it rather than accumulate it in a family fortune over generations.
> This literally does not make any sense. I paid tax on all those things.
It makes perfect sense. You paid tax on your income, but when you give them money, that's their income, and they need to pay taxes on it.
This notion that you pay tax and then can do anything you want with the money is your not understanding how taxes work. If you give your kids money, that's income for them, they owe taxes on it. Everyone is taxed on their income, you don't get to bypass tax laws because they're your family.
> Since when is it the governments job to make people " understand what it means to not be wealthy."?
You're not paying attention, I didn't say it was to tech them a lesson, I said it was to protect society from them.
> So why don't we ban it altogether?
Because small amounts aren't bad, large amounts are, and that's why we have the inheritance tax.
> Once you hit 18 years of age, you are given a government-built apartament, $1000 pocket money, and off you go, enjoy democracy.
Now you're just being childish. Show me anywhere I said or implied such nonsense.
> Meanwhile, if you die, all your possessions can go to the government who will make sure that your wealth is redistributed to the greatest benefit of the society.
Above a certain amount, that's exactly what should happen.
You want to give money/goods to your children so that they have a easier life and need to work less to get the same decent life as anybody.
This is totally valid, up to a certain point. Let's take the other extrem, when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life. There is absolutely no need of such a concentration of wealth.
That's why inheritance should have a strongly progressive taxation rate.
>>when a child could inherit enough to get a better life without working than someone working his whole life
Why not? If I, as a parent, worked hard enough to make life easy for my child, who are you to tell me that I can't do it?(I mean in general, don't take this personally)
I have paid tax on everything that I made, bought, or built - why would they pay tax on the same things again??
Following your argument, we should stop giving our children absolutely anything - you could argue that someone's child should not be given a phone or a car,because it's unfair towards someone else who had to work for it,right? But then why do you care - I worked hard to buy those things to give to my children. Anything else is irrelevant.
I can give you another example which makes me hate inheritance tax with passion - I know a family, which had a house which was owned by them for centuries. And then, when the parents died,they didn't have a lot of money, so the only thing left was that house. HMRC enters the scene -> children have to pay inheritance tax on the house. There is no money left,so they have to sell their family house, purely because people think it would be "unfair" for them to keep it. Absolute BS if you ask me.
Let us first say that if you sold it to someone else there would likely be sales tax involved (in most places) so the idea of giving someone stuff tax-free is unusual. The point of inheritance taxes is not to prevent you passing it on, it is to prevent the building of family empires which tend to screw people (in addition to being another revenue source). But why? The ONLY purpose of government is actually to preserve order by preventing people from being assholes to each other. Turns out people tend to do that if nobody keeps them in check. Now the rich kinda think the purpose is to keep people from doing anything to THEM, but even that still concedes my stated purpose for government. Large accumulations of wealth can be both good or bad, but from where I sit it looks like the super-rich aren't even sure what to do with all their money, so why not? Estate-tax is just another knob to turn in the preservation of society. The only real question is how far to turn it. I'm open to debate from all sides on that issue.
f I, as a parent, worked hard enough to make life easy for my child, who are you to tell me that I can't do it?
The point is to increase your children's (that is, everyone's) reliance on the government, of course. The ideal for statists would be to remove parents from the equation completely. You've read Brave New World, right?
But you are talking about extreme cases, where people inherit millions of dollars, and that's probably 0.1% of all inheritance cases. I am arguing that this would hit regular people with regular incomes. You save up $100,000 for your child to go to collage over 25 years of your career, and then happen to die? Well, shit son, your child only gets $15,000, rest is taken by the government to make life more fair. But hey, at least they are not coasting through life on their daddy's money, right?
Nobody is interested in taxing your kid's college fund--we just don't want the Waltons running our country for the next 100 years: http://walmart1percent.org/family/
Despite majority of HN thinking otherwise, there is world outside of US. Here in the UK the threshold for the inheritance tax is £325,000, and unless you live in a 2 bedroom apartment or a very small house in the countryside, you will most definitely hit it, which means that most people in the UK will have to pay inheritance tax on their family homes once their parents die. This is wrong in my opinion.
The tax is apparently 40%. So the heirs of a single person with a home worth twice the average will owe £11,600 in taxes (it looks like some of the exemption is transferable for couples, so ~0 taxes for lots of people).
It doesn't seem so onerous for people receiving a $600,000 house to have to pay $20,000 in taxes (it's certainly an amount that most owners of such houses will be able to plan for).
Ah, Robin Hood democracy. Of course villagers would vote to take away from the king and give to themselves. It all depends on the perspective - if a regular Joe Smith realized that his child will not be able to keep his house because they would never afford to pay 85% of its value in tax, they might not vote for such a law.
85% is way steep, but the general idea is necessary. It prevents the development of a de-facto hereditary aristocracy and also prevents the economy from being winner-take-all. (Citation needed; I can't find it at the moment.)
I can not stress this enough: NEVER work for free. Don't do unpaid internships. Also try to avoid selling yourself under value (hint: you are probably worth at least twice you could imagine). Ever had someone accept your demanded rate without negotiating? You know you must ask for more next time.
Besides owing it to yourself, working for less than your right wage will harm your industry.
I can understand the frustration of the author, however, HuffPo is not a government or social entity. It IS part of the free market. I am a huge proponent of the free market, however, that does not mean the free market will be perfect. In the short term, there are fits and starts and cycles that everything goes through, but it is only through the free market that we will progress over the long-term.
Writers are unfortunately caught up in one of these free-market tornadoes, and to survive, they need to transform.
The author, instead of looking at this as "writing for free", should look at this as an opportunity to create his personal platform. HuffPo is paying him by giving access to their audience. It is up to him to take advantage of that. Yes, it's not easy, but it's reality.
But what is the actual benefit of the HuffPo platform? I don't think anyone sees "HuffPo Contributor" as a byline and considers the author to somehow be a legitimate writer. Nor does HuffPo give any percentage of ad revenue.
The best possible scenario is that readers get used to seeing your name on the Huffington Post, so they return for your future posts. Great. You don't get paid for them either.
Can you point out even one success from this platform? Someone who started out on HuffPo and has become successful?
I don't think that's how the world works, you don't go from "I blogged at the Huffington Post" to President, but maybe it gets you a paid journalism gig, or a book deal, or it just fractionally helps the pagerank of your own site. Maybe it just looks slightly more interesting on a résumé than your wordpress blog. What do you expect to get out of writing about your interests in your free time?
Anecdotal example: I'm essentially a nobody but was approached by a literary agent after a HP blog post.
HuffPo should not be a writer's full-time job. It should be used as a platform to drive traffic/attention towards something else that you're working on.
No, I think the author has every right to be insulted and angry over the presumption that he should work for free. Just saying "well, that's the way it is" is intellectually lazy, and portraying a dominant middleman like HuffPo as a healthy part of a genuinely free market is simply wrong.
i disagree. the huff has a business model weather you like it or not. clearly the value proposition doesn't fit what the writer wants, but can you blame huff for asking? thats like being insulted because the ugly guy at the bar asked you out. what ever feelings you have from it are justified, but this writer goes and blogs online about their 'experience' wanting sympathy and traffic.
so yeah, the writer wants your business and what they offered was them complaining that they had a job offer that did not pay.
There is nothing in the free market economic rules that promotes or guarantees progress over long-term, including journalism. The good economic outcomes did not come and will not come out of that rules. All econometric models will show you how other assumptions were required for that to happen.
It will be actions other than free market ones that will allow or not the survival of journalism. Hope they will get it before they die.
By the way: I assume you're a developer of some sort, since you're reading Hacker News. I need an app developed. My start-up has raised a few million in funding, but we can't pay you with money. Writing code is clearly something you're passionate about, and giving you an outlet for that passion should be compensation enough.
"The wealthiest families in the UK are those of the Earl of Cadogan and the Duke of Westminster, both of which inherited ownership of prime London real estate. They have done nothing to develop that real estate, nothing to earn it, and their ownership benefits absolutely nobody except for themselves. In fact, their total control pushes housing costs so high that the entire nation has become indebted to pay excessive mortgage costs, simply to protect their ownership of land that is, in national and global terms, economically dormant."
This is completely true, apparently. I was just listening to an Economist podcast episode on real estate in London. Existing housing property cannot be redeveloped for higher density because the existing long-term leases do not come up for renewal at the same time and must be renewable. On the other hand, the freeholder (the one actually owning the property) is in theory responsible for infrastructure but is apparently free from that responsibility in practice.
If a for-profit business seeks to employ you without financial compensation they are breaking the law. If you offer your services below minimum wage you are breaking the law. If the worker's services are an integral part of the employer's business the worker is an employee of that company. If the role isn't an essential functions of the company you could be a contractor.
Either way you must pay wages.
Or can the text on pages like these be stretched to say exactly the opposite of what it says?
Employers can’t avoid paying the National Minimum Wage if it’s due by:
saying or stating that it doesn’t apply
making a written agreement saying someone isn’t a worker or that they’re a volunteer
Vrijwilliger verricht werkzaamheden voor een organisatie zonder winstoogmerk.
De organisatie mag geen (bedrijf) B.V. of N.V. zijn, tenzij sportvereniging.
De vrijwilliger verricht het werk niet als zijn beroep.
translation: Must be a no-profit, must not be the same work as your paid job. You may help relatives for free as long as you are not getting social support.
I'm curious now, how does Hufington Post (New York) do it?
I wouldn't pay him either. I got bored after the second paragraph.
Before you downvote: I have hired hundreds of writers in my time, and am currently paying out hundreds of dollars/day to content creators at http://newslines.org/newslines-rewards/
I sympathize and share the author's dislike of this particular business model, however, I am fairly certain the Huffpo staffer addressed didn't read past the first paragraph.
Their ways? Arianna Huffington didn't cause the current epidemic of narcissism making people willing to write for free to stroke their ego as he aptly noted. She also didn't inherit HuffPo so all that talk about socialism and inheritance tax is just more signalling on the author's part. Which is why they chose him.
If some street hustler challenges you to a game of three card monte you don't need to bother to play, just hand him the money, not because you're going to lose but because you owe him for the insight: he selected you.[1]
He owes them an article on cancer, I believe.
[1] http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html