"The market has spoken: - Max Liberty
I have noticed that words like digital goods and ideas are getting thrown around. This make for a very confusing discussion.
It seem that I was talking about the production of digital goods while others talked about using ideas to produce something?
No, either the idea does not exist which makes it a non-good, or the idea is common knowledge which makes it a non-good. The only way an idea could be a good is if its a secret(eg black mail).
But once an idea becomes common knowledge(eg the black mail is sold) the supply becomes infinite.
Woah! This quote doesn’t belong to me!
ah. sorry. Didnt proof read.
You could use the same argument is support of a socialistic central planning… But the issue comes down to relative prices.
You did not read my posts, did not understand them, or are an idiot. My assumptions are based on a a value free economic approach, not a system of rights, natural or govenment fiat…Thus my argument is not on right or wrong, but on what happens in the market as a result of a legal framework (either one that does not accept IP or does). So you must, in order to refute my argument, go by my points and show the errors in my pragmatic argument by pointing out where my theory is flase and why my predictions are unsound, not by appeals to “rights” (i.e. the NAP).
I am following the same argument Mises advocates in “Human Action”, and then embelishing it to encompass an economic calculation problem due to the identical nature of relative prices under no IP, in the realm of ideas (which are subject to a disconnect in scarcity).
I could very well say “You can’t be for real. Prices without IP do not reflect consumer demand (note: relative pricing structure), they represent a problem in disconnect driven infinite goods.”
but you didnt address how confident you feel in your Misesian argument, under the combustion engine or wheel scenario. it seemed for a moment that you were poised to reject or qualify some particular assumption Mises made. but perhaps not. so tell me is there an underproduction currently of things with wheels because there is presently not a monopoly price affixed to wheeliness, and do you think there should be a wheel tax?
I have also noticed we are both using a different definition (or coming from a different perspective) of production for (what I have been calling) IP based goods (or, goods that have a temporal, scarcity disconnect). I dismissing comissions or being hired, prior to the invention of the good, to invent and and produce the idea that would be immediately posessed by the one who hired you (I see this as mostly a service, similar to tech support). My viewpoint is on the lone entreprenuer who has not been comissioned to produce something, and thus is not performing a service - but purely in the area of development and production.
There will be an underproduction in the development of future “wheel” improvement’s, not in the wheel as it is exhibited at that time in the market. It is becasue of this that a wheel tax would be, not only useless, but damaging to the market, and have a negative effect on consumer satisfaction.
Goods that have become infinite is supply (goods on the market side of the disconnect) are worthless and only enter my argument in order to showcase the temporial disconnect surrounding IP based goods. My inquiry only models the goods on the super-scarce (inventor) side of the disconnect.
Apparently you do not find my “temporial disconnect” assumption viable?
it would seem that as you do not support that wheeliness should be owned by someone or have an artificial monopoly price attached to it that you are abandoning your attempt to economically justify IP…
neh?
if wheeliness was owanable or chargeable, this would hamper the production of wheel based products (you were clear on this).
if ownership or chargeability would however have a benefit to inspire future wheel improvements Wheel2, then perhaps this ccould justify it. but then wheel2 could be analysed just as we have analysed wheel1.
so where does that leave us?
Are you a programmer? Do you know what it takes to create something as complex as a video game? The hundreds of thousands of man-hours needed? Who can afford to pay the entire development cost on their own? And if you are ‘creating new things’, when do you deliver the product? Twenty years later? This isnt pong we’re talking about, but complex programs. Modding existing game engines is an option, but who created the game engine you’re modding? No one will, because there is no profit to be had from it. But you’re very good at responding to points. “you’re fucking clueless”. I’m completely without retort to such ingenious third grade debate techniques.
Huh? I don’t understand. If a digital good that is not yet produced yet fetch a high price, doesn’t that prove that relative prices do exists without IP?
LS, the first time you made your point. You yourself said in this thread that it was good to exchange ideas on a friendly field. Isnt this crossing the line a bit? You dont have to agree with Max, but please respect his right to have an opinion, wrong though you may think it is, and not ridicule him to no end.
This is one of the biggest problems that libertarians have today, that even here, where most of us agree on 99% of our beleifs, we bicker and go very low in our debates. To an outsider, we would appear to be a bunch of children fighting over every minute detail. Why would a liberal or conservative ever join the discussion, and therefore hopefully be educated and change their mind, when we are so openly aggressive toward each other?
In the case of IP, let us hope that someday there is a world where we can test what the true free market will do with no IP. Then, if people such as myself are correct and there needs to be some basic protection, we will at least know for certain. And if we are wrong, and the market does indeed find a way, I will of course admit I was wrong. I pray that happens, because that means that the other 99% of the beleifs we share has also happened. In conclusion, we are all friends here, so lets all take a deep breath and realize that fact.
Are you trying to misunderstand everything I said? That is my frustration with you! You misunderstood everything I said and ignore all the points that I made.
I am a game programmer and I know very well the cost of game development, the long hours that is needed, and how fucking difficult it is to create good games! I been there. I failed lot of projects and succeeded in finishing some.
What wrong with people hiring other people to make fun games for them? Don’t answer because you got so focused on selling games to entrepeneurs or distributors who in turn sell them for profit that you ignore entirely that I was selling my services to gamers, directly.
Want to see my little contract job? Go here.
Go ahead and laugh all you want and how my minicule my earning is but please actually comperhend what I actually said!
I feel very insulted that somebody actually questions that if I actually program and don’t know the immense difficulty of game development.
Kiba, I understand what you’re saying. And there very well can be many people developing programs such as yours. But as you hopefully concede, you could not develop the new call of duty. Not on your own. Even if you had the time and patience and immense skill to do so, no one could afford to pay you for it. Thus the market would be deprived of call of duty. Call this a good or bad thing, but my point is that w/o something protecting the code from being pirated by everyone, the large projects will never happen. Entire industries would cease to exist outside the hobbyists.
It seems as though you’re suggesting that we be reduced to all being independent contractors as far as software goes. What of books? You have two weeks to write your software, a book takes much longer. I cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars for an author to spend a year writing me a custom book. But, because the book has a copyright, and it is illegal to reproduce it without the author’s consent, he can write a book and sell it to a publishing company, who will then turn and profit from its mass production.
I believe I addressed your point, if not point out what I did not address to me, and I will. Please also address my points above.
What LS is really saying is that he is acknowledging that he is wrong and his arguement no longer makes sense in light of the obvious. Unable to admit his error he resorts to personal attacks.
Kiba, what Jack and I are talking about are not one consumer paying labor directly for a product. Your product may be sufficiently desired by many so that with some mechanism in place preventing them from using the product unless they exchange $50 with you, that you could earn a living exclusively producing such, which would fulfill specialization of labor. Do you fail to see why this is both in your best and the consumers’ best interest?
Essentially, copyright tries to most efficiently ask the consumers, would you rather scarce resources be put to X use or Y? It is a signal that consumers may prefer information, an infinite good, to bread, or the production of some other scarce good. This is not a labor theory of value, because access to the information is freely priced and is not guaranteed to be profitable or not. The wage rates/salaries, the complexity of the information, and the amount of labor time spent has no effect on what the market will offer in demand.
I’ve mentioned the mass-consumer “bounty” method of doing this, and how few consumers are willing to fund information development this way. What is needed is entrepreneurial vision, profit motive, and calculation. But if entrepreneurs do not receive a marketable product from the laborers, but an infinite good with a market value equal to its marginal cost, which is significantly less than its fixed cost (labor for the infinite good), then entrepreneurs can only capitalize best on services and scarce goods that they produce in addition to the information. This again harms specialization of labor. What if I know video gamers’ tastes, I know they want a full length game that will take a year or two to produce, I know they will prefer playing this game over alternative uses of their money, and I have the capital to produce it, but I have no idea about how to go about producing posters, physical discs, an overly resourceful website, etc., then I will need to find someone to handle that. But why would they align with me, when once they have my infinite good, they can simply cut me out? It’s like saying one (or all) of the members of the Federal Reserve will refuse to inflate in harmony with the other banks because it doesn’t want to devalue the real value of its debts. They may not like the game, but if that’s what it is, they’ll play it. A gift economy will not work efficiently, and that’s what this scenario effectively reduces it to. Without IP law, entrepreneurs cannot direct the production of information most efficiently towards consumer desires. This does not mean entrepreneurs cannot profit through alternative business models (and that such may actually be more profitable in cases), but IP law does not deny them this opportunity.
The linking of infinite goods and scarce goods doesn’t make sense to me in many cases. It obviously applies to instances where the scarce goods are specific and complex and required to consume the infinite good. For example, engines and tomatoes. Engine designs and tomato DNA or cultivation techniques cannot be consumed without the physical good, nor can engines or tomatoes be created without some amount of knowledge. But there is no engine that is designed to reconfigure itself based upon being fed engine designs. What about software, music, and literature, which is able to be consumed on a variety of general purpose devices? Any scarce goods attempted to be mixed with these are strictly complimentary to the prime informational, infinite good. Their supply costs and expected demand are different than potential demand for the informational good under IP law. Which do you believe will produce the primary good, the information, more efficiently? It does not matter if both are simply profitable. What is the difference in profit? How does this affect the marginal producer? Are there instances where it is more profitable to use IP law rather than sales of complimentary scarce goods as a business model? If so, then it is inevitable that many projects will only be pursued under one business model and not the other. Given that both can exist under copyright law, it seems like a market restriction to do away with it.
Then there’s the argument of the cost of enforcing copyright violation being an additional cost onto the business model of artificial exclusion and unenforcible piracy being priced into expected demand. Alternative business models won’t have these costs. I would assume that entrepreneurs surely take this into account already. And costs associated with contract violation should be passed onto the violator, not the enforcer.
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The Techdirt alternative business model would be to syndicalize the release of the infinite good, thus drawing mass consumers back to a particular web location frequently, which would necessarily have the most updated and content-heavy information. This creates demand for advertisement (and other goods/services) on your site (time and space delimited - so they are scarce), especially for producers of physical goods that enhance that information. In this manner, the information becomes most commonly linked to other scarce goods, which command a market price.
Essentially this means all information production should be done in the smallest possible discrete entities as possible, while retaining consumer interest. There are numerous cases where this is not viable, or not even close to being as profitable as using copyright, where significant production time must be spent to create a project that is fully enjoyable. For instance, while we will read a book one chapter at a time, we don’t prefer to watch films scene by scene. The only way such would be possible with film, in my mind, is to reduce production budgets to reality TV levels. I don’t think such moves represent the market desires of either producers or consumers.
I can tell you that business models can do and will scale. There was a guy with much bigger reputation who was able to raise 700 dollars of the 1000 dollars in a pledge drive before his project get derailed by outside events.
I also know other failure of those who tried the ransom model. One involving the company Sixth Floor Lab. I viewed the failure as largely having unrealistic expectation and inability to raise awareness and follow through with their game projects. ($320 of the $40,000 raised)
Admitely, They all have much more programming experiences than me with more pledges from customers and yet they failed to gain any money. I viewed this as mostly as an entrenpenural failure.
I also have quite bit of experience in what is actually a big risk and what is actually not because I live and breath these models. I can assure you that small scale projects or probably even a small popular site are not at the risk of “piracy”. Even when my wiki was at the hieght of its traffic(It got dugg once, and stumbleuponed several times), nobody actually brother copying the encyclopedia and earn some money with it. Nobody has so far copied it in the two years my site been in existence.
I am very realistic and incremental in approach to business.
I actually have the same kind of feeling you do. It wouldn’t work according to my gut feeling. It would probably fail spectacularly Yet I am succeeding more than ever before…I may not be the best entrepeneur in the market, but I can outlast practically everybody. I am willing to try new business models and take any jobs as long I get my foot into the door. My patience knows no end.
Other people wouldn’t believe for a second that it would work or believe that piracy will be so rampant so they never tried it. That what entrepneurship is. It is risky, ambigious, and uncertain but you never know if your economic theory is correct if you don’t try.
Maybe two years later, I’ll be a prosperous businessman who finally disproves all the critics wrong. On the other hand, I will probably be just another CS student looking over the horizon working at one of these wage-slave job at a software company. I don’t know how the future will play out. The odd are is that I will be complementing my income with one of these lucrative web application programming job and do my hobby on the side.
Do you eat your own dog food?