Re: Markets (was Re: Hayek was right. Twice.)
On Wed, 3 Jul 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Again, If you offered the average guy the deal Would you like on demand access to all movies and television shows ever made, even if it meant fewer and lower budget movie releases in future?, I think most people would go for on demand access to everything. That might well be. But being that you're tapping into something largely produced under existing copyright law, I fail to see why this is an argument against continuing the practice of copyright in some form. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
On Tue, 2 Jul 2002, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Rival means that only one person can own something at once. That, technically, is the case with anything digitable. No. It is the case with the digitized version, but not the work. Nobody would argue that actual copies aren't normal, private goods. One time, when copying was difficult, there was even a one-to-few correspondence between works and copies. Today that isn't the case. Replication and creation are now neatly separable, and benefits of scale in the former do not translate to returns to the latter. Copies are still a private good, as ever, but works are becoming increasingly pure public goods. According to orthodox public goods theory, that might well be a problem. In practice the issue is muddled beyond belief, of course. Excludable, if you want to go back to your eurosocialst wanker Le Monde Diplomatique definition, means that when you've used it, it's useless to anyone else. Did this thread really start with something taken from LMD? The list really *has* stooped to an all-time low... It's price, however, is very, very, small, however, but just because it's cheap doesn't mean that you can't do transactions that small. The point in copyright wars is about incentives to authors vs. the right to copy privately, not about the ease of copying. Sure, microtransactions are a possibility. But when the yield does not go to the one who created the master copy, why should anyone create anything, anymore? (Or, more realistically, why should people create at an efficient level?) Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
From: Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED] But when the yield does not go to the one who created the master copy, why should anyone create anything, anymore? (Or, more realistically, why should people create at an efficient level?) There's no such thing as efficient level, except in the tautology the market outcome is always efficient. We both created stuff we didn't expect to be paid for - these emails. Why - this is for psychology to discover. Mark
Markets (was Re: Hayek was right. Twice.)
From: Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED] There's no such thing as efficient level, except in the tautology the market outcome is always efficient. Only if you take as granted a market based on some fixed set of property rights and other rules of exchange. If you do this, there is no reason to discuss the issue further and your reply was, to put it bluntly, superfluous. I can't see a market defined as anything else than private property and voluntary exchange. We both created stuff we didn't expect to be paid for - these emails. True. But somehow I fail to see how one can scale this sort of reasoning to entail anything approaching one of the current TOP10 movies. Irrelevant. Does Linux scale to your intended target any better? How about a voluntary army in WW2? People do even grand things without expecting to be paid (or even worse, expecting to die from it), because they want to. If you want them to produce more, feel free to pay them. Arguments I don't like that they only produce this much, so YOU should pay them are at least inane. Mark
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
Marcel Popescu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote : From: Sampo Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED] But when the yield does not go to the one who created the master copy, why should anyone create anything, anymore? (Or, more realistically, why should people create at an efficient level?) There's no such thing as efficient level, except in the tautology the market outcome is always efficient. We both created stuff we didn't expect to be paid for - these emails. Why - this is for psychology to discover. Mark The why is easy - for some reason you think that strutting around in this barnyard is going to get you more chicas. Mike
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 At 12:41 PM +0300 on 7/3/02, Sampo Syreeni wrote: No. It is the case with the digitized version, but not the work. What is a CD but a copy of a work, Sampo? Record companies sell *records*, right? A copy on my hard drive is *my* copy. I can, in fact, sell you a copy of my copy (I love recursion), but then the space, occupied by your copy, is *your* copy. It's rival. Did this thread really start with something taken from LMD? The list really *has* stooped to an all-time low... :-). I'm not the yokel who started this fight quoting LMD, I'm just the guy who's finishing it... The non-rival, non-excludable thing is standard academic econ-talk, though. I was jerking his chain a bit about quoting a eurosocialist rag, like you seem to be doing. The part about it not being applicable is close to being right, thought. Or at least that even if one applies the non-rival, non-excludable double negative nonsense one still gets the right answer with private transactions involving all digital goods and services. The point in copyright wars is about incentives to authors vs. the right to copy privately, not about the ease of copying. Sure, microtransactions are a possibility. But when the yield does not go to the one who created the master copy, why should anyone create anything, anymore? (Or, more realistically, why should people create at an efficient level?) For me, this is all about Coase's theorem, transaction cost, Coase's observation that you can't have a market without property, and the fact that, of course, if transaction costs were low enough, if we had a working bearer cash economy on the net, for instance, the definition of property would not be a legal one involving intellectual property, but a physical one, about encrypted bits, protected not with laws, but with strong financial cryptography protocols. Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSL1u8PxH8jf3ohaEQK0JQCgvEOEsTIGXNOzEWgcvsO4eUmzjkAAoPAC 1tHGCoKRd/zJM4vj+6ihuKoL =4uQY -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Marcel Popescu wrote: There's no such thing as efficient level, except in the tautology the market outcome is always efficient. Only if you take as granted a market based on some fixed set of property rights and other rules of exchange. If you do this, there is no reason to discuss the issue further and your reply was, to put it bluntly, superfluous. We both created stuff we didn't expect to be paid for - these emails. True. But somehow I fail to see how one can scale this sort of reasoning to entail anything approaching one of the current TOP10 movies. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
-- We both created stuff we didn't expect to be paid for - these emails. On 3 Jul 2002 at 20:49, Sampo Syreeni wrote: True. But somehow I fail to see how one can scale this sort of reasoning to entail anything approaching one of the current TOP10 movies. First, lost of people make plays, music, ballet, etc, without expectation of turning a profit from copyright. Partly it is to impress the chicks, partly to sell idea, and sell stuff. The Powerpuff movie is largely funded by toymakers. Secondly, if everyone had a chip containing all the movies and television shows that were ever made, would it be such a disaster if movie production declined? Most movies, and most music videos are just copycat stuff. In the course of channel surfing I recently saw the latest singer chick, made up like Suzi Quatro, doing a total ripoff of Suzi Quatro's version of I love rock and roll, using very similar props to Suzi Quatro. Did we really need the extra version? Would it not be better if we had better access to the original (and much better) version. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cViyObtLN5BKiheTPxywftMCkfzYp19VoUGNbStu 2J8LQiLfHEVpAn5S63xnIH6XUNss3bIzaSNfvdCvv
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, R. A. Hettinga wrote: For me, this is all about Coase's theorem, transaction cost, Coase's observation that you can't have a market without property, Quite. Coase's reasoning demonstrated that any initial allocation of property rights is equivalent (both in the allocative and distributive senses) when transaction costs amount to nil. So, if we look at the distribution side of the information industry, you're absolutely right. The smaller the transaction costs the better -- rivalry applies to any particular copy, as it does to services involved disseminating the bits. Any trades required are bilateral, competition does its job and everything is just dandy. But if we look at the creation end, that's a different story entirely. Anyone eventually receiving a copy will benefit roughly equally from the efforts of the artist/author. If copying and distribution are exceedingly cheap, as we'd expect them to be in the future, the number of people for whom acquiring the information would be profitable easily grows to the tens or hundreds of millions. Since any copy released will be widely disseminated, the deal between the original author and the public with an interest in his work will be multilateral in the extreme. It cannot be reduced into a bunch of bilateral trades as in the case of private commerce. This means that we get sizable transaction costs. IP is there to force the economy into something approximating the conventional, material one, and so internalize externality otherwise generated. (No, it does not solve the problem. But limited term copyright could still strike a near-optimal bargain.) If something, Coase's original point is behind copyright, not its antithesis. That's why I rarely use economic reasoning to argue for IP abolition, even when I consider IP a bad idea. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Markets (was Re: Hayek was right. Twice.)
-- On 4 Jul 2002 at 1:26, Sampo Syreeni wrote: But try constructing an Independence Day without Will Smith. Or the special effects. Or the soundtrack. Or the distribution chain. Try guaranteeing that it arrives on schedule without making a loss. I think you will not be able to accomplish that with a volunteer effort. Try doing that tens of thousands of times a year (that's for all of what is currently covered by IP) and you're bound to fail. Unlike with Linux, the individual parts of most larger projects involving IP are of no use without the surrounding whole. Unlike Linux, many IP products aren't modular, reusable or decomposable, and so they can only exist if you can find a single source of financing for the whole project. In the case of modular projects, you can rely on overlapping interests to fill in the voids, but most projects aren't like that. Especially if all that the creator gets is the ever-diminishing value of a single copy. Increasingly the locations of big blockbuster movies exist inside a computer, so a substantial reduction in finance would reduce, rather than end the genre. Again, If you offered the average guy the deal Would you like on demand access to all movies and television shows ever made, even if it meant fewer and lower budget movie releases in future?, I think most people would go for on demand access to everything. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gWZBRbSRNDjGq8+KjaoqOPxgT5lZ2F9LX2ocm0bc 2zgr4eTiKCozbQHScUv6yEqK35dT0WvEzOV/Rd8Fp
Re: Markets (was Re: Hayek was right. Twice.)
On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Marcel Popescu wrote: I can't see a market defined as anything else than private property and voluntary exchange. Then you really must be blind. Markets not based on private property or volition abound. The political process is one of them. Social control is another. Gift economies, like Open Source, are a third. One might claim most markets are based on something other than the above mentioned combination. Irrelevant. Does Linux scale to your intended target any better? It does indeed. But unlike movies, Linux is a modular project. The kernel would exist in the absence of the GNU toolset, and vice versa. X would exist in the absence of UNIX, too. Each of the common desktop applications could very well have been coded on top of something else than Linux. But try constructing an Independence Day without Will Smith. Or the special effects. Or the soundtrack. Or the distribution chain. Try guaranteeing that it arrives on schedule without making a loss. I think you will not be able to accomplish that with a volunteer effort. Try doing that tens of thousands of times a year (that's for all of what is currently covered by IP) and you're bound to fail. Unlike with Linux, the individual parts of most larger projects involving IP are of no use without the surrounding whole. Unlike Linux, many IP products aren't modular, reusable or decomposable, and so they can only exist if you can find a single source of financing for the whole project. In the case of modular projects, you can rely on overlapping interests to fill in the voids, but most projects aren't like that. Especially if all that the creator gets is the ever-diminishing value of a single copy. Why is it that there's no Buzz for Linux? No decent installer? (Not one of them survives my hardware...) No workable Unicode support? A stable 64-bit filesystem? Why is nobody willing to guarantee kernel stability, even when paid big bucks? 'Cause the project is a gift, and only caters to a single kind of need: something an individual developer/company really needs and can afford to develop for him/itself, then losing little by exposing the code to others. Usefulness thinly spread over a considerable user community is completely forgotten. People do even grand things without expecting to be paid (or even worse, expecting to die from it), because they want to. Well, what stupid people they are. I wouldn't go anywhere as far as gettimg myself killed for the common good. Even paying for software I can just copy is a stretch. What makes you think most people care enough to Do the Right Thing? What makes you think relying on Doing the Right Thing is a good idea? I mean, it's been tried before, and the consequences aren't worth a second look. If you want them to produce more, feel free to pay them. Arguments I don't like that they only produce this much, so YOU should pay them are at least inane. Indeed they are. So are ones assuming that anything not profitable to a single person couldn't be to a larger number of individuals. Like most things, private property rights and economic theory based solely on bilateral trade are a matter of continuous dispute. It's not that I don't consider them useful (I do; nowadays you could call me, too, a libertarian), but taking them as granted isn't the way to go, either. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Markets (was Re: Hayek was right. Twice.)
On Thu, Jul 04, at 01:26AM, Sampo Syreeni wrote: | I can't see a market defined as anything else than private property and | voluntary exchange. | | Then you really must be blind. Markets not based on private property or | volition abound. The political process is one of them. Social control is | another. Gift economies, like Open Source, are a third. One might claim | most markets are based on something other than the above mentioned | combination. Property does not always consist of physical goods. Case in point would be the encrypted bits. To use some of your examples, the polical process involves votes, which are the property of the person casting the ballots, likewise, at least in this country, ballots are cast voluntarily. Gift economics. Who coined that phrase? Don't take credit for it, it is a stupid term. Time and effort are both considered property to be used as deemed fit by the person possessing, in this case, the skills to use them on an Open Source (the volunteer kind, since you can't seem to grasp that there are Open Source projects that make money.) | It does indeed. But unlike movies, Linux is a modular project. The kernel | would exist in the absence of the GNU toolset, and vice versa. X would | exist in the absence of UNIX, too. Each of the common desktop applications | could very well have been coded on top of something else than Linux. You're too ignorant to be replied to, I wish I hadn't wasted the time, but I digress. I can't think many things more modular than movies, except perhaps theatre, but movies have even more latitude. Actors can't be switched? Sets can't be constructed out of nothing on a computer screen? Movies can't be made with virtually no budget? Get a clue. | Why is it that there's no Buzz for Linux? No decent installer? (Not one of | them survives my hardware...) No workable Unicode support? A stable 64-bit | filesystem? Why is nobody willing to guarantee kernel stability, even when | paid big bucks? 'Cause the project is a gift, and only caters to a single | kind of need: something an individual developer/company really needs and | can afford to develop for him/itself, then losing little by exposing the | code to others. Usefulness thinly spread over a considerable user | community is completely forgotten. As someone who actually helps people with unix problems and who is a unix user, I want to let you know that you fall into the stupid user category if you can't get a linux distro to install on your computer. Linux is a new breed of project, if you want it and it really matters to you, the argument goes that you would either do it, (if you're capable, but you clearly aren't) or you pay someone else to do it. (this falls into the heading of put your money where your mouth is.) Throw in the fact that usefulness is an entirely relative term, and you have a really poor argument. | Well, what stupid people they are. I wouldn't go anywhere as far as | gettimg myself killed for the common good. Even paying for software I can | just copy is a stretch. What makes you think most people care enough to Do | the Right Thing? What makes you think relying on Doing the Right Thing is | a good idea? I mean, it's been tried before, and the consequences aren't | worth a second look. Well, here you show your ignorance of economics again. ( on this one point, don't feel too bad, though you are ignorant, you're in a league that is very well populated ) First off, not everyone is motivated by financial gain. profit is not necessarily a financial thing, when someone stops and helps you out when you have a flat, the odds are that they are not expecting you to pay them for their help. When someone helps you install linux on your computer, they aren't likely to expect financial remuneration, specially if you go to one of the great many Linux User Groups throughout this country and many others. Often the economic argument made is that people do what is in their best interest. The problem that arises is when people who aren't very bright (hint, hint) assume that that means financial reward of some kind. People are complex creatures, to presume that financial gain is the only motivation for people is a tad naive. | Indeed they are. So are ones assuming that anything not profitable to a | single person couldn't be to a larger number of individuals. Like most | things, private property rights and economic theory based solely on | bilateral trade are a matter of continuous dispute. It's not that I don't | consider them useful (I do; nowadays you could call me, too, a | libertarian), but taking them as granted isn't the way to go, either. Well, libertarians usually, though not always, go along with free markets, which is not what you're advocating. Usually, any economic theory that assumes that anything could have no value to anyone is wrong. Basic relativity (in the subjective sense) states otherwise. Bilateral trade is the only kind of exchange in a free market
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Anonymous wrote: Ignoring market failures (such things as public goods and externalities), markets are efficient in the sense that they produce a Pareto optimal outcome. Even if you neglect market failures in the usual sense, an outcome such as everybody becoming a slave to a single individual is Pareto efficient -- you can't dissolve the situation without hurting the slave owner. Pareto efficiency talks about allocation, not distribution, and so the latter can be arbitrarily skewed in a Pareto efficient economy. Even to the point of apparent absurdity. It's a different thing altogether, then, whether you can approach such a dismal state of affairs via Pareto moves... A Pareto nonoptimal state, which is what you get with public goods, is a condition where you could redistribute wealth and resources and make every person happier or at least no less happy. I don't think so. Instead I'd say that is Marshall efficiency in the absence of transaction costs. The trouble is, you can never make everybody happier by redistributing since someone will have to pay the cost. (Here we of course assume that everybody wants more of everything.) So there is a redistribution which would make many people happier without making anyone less happy. More to the point, there is a redistribution which would allow the total amount voluntarily paid by a large number of people exceed the amount a minority is ready to pay to avert the cost of the redistribution. (Nowadays I'm thinking this isn't bad in itself, but that amplification of this sort of pattern via returns to scale is.) Therefore it is clear that it is quite meaningful to investigate whether markets produce efficient or non-efficient outcomes in various situations. There is no tautology involved. Quite. But on the other hand, public goods reasoning is also a very, very dangerous thing. Consumption side externalities are my personal favorite. Suppose there is a considerable personal benefit to rich people in seeing the average bum spend his money in something respectable instead of liquor. In this case, liquor consumption has a visible externality, and optimal provision calls for institutions which more or less tax the rich and use the proceeds to encourage the bum to straighten up. Now, that doesn't sound *too* bad in itself, but when you apply the same reasoning to the educational needs of the young and the societal benefits one would expect of a highly educated younger generation... Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Hayek was right. Twice.
At 7:09 PM -0400 on 7/2/02, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Touchi mon pidant, touchi... Shit. All that fancy option-e accent whatchamacallit nonsense with the old mac here, and it comes back i. Somebody call the French language police and send Steve Jobs off to jail. And, yeah, I know, the screed I wrote had an extra however in a sentence or two, and a few questions were missing question marks. Life is hard. :-). As Dr. Brin says, feh! Cheers, RAH Who's not above a feh or two himself, every once in a while... -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
