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Comment by BlackLotus89 | Hacker News Reader

Paying somebody to don't use something free doesn't equal the value of the product.

If you would pay me each month to not listen to music on youtube, while being at work, it would be far more than I would pay to keep using it. It would be a damn shame if I couldn't do that anymore, but I would never pay the same amount to keep using it.

Edit: structure

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Consider 2 scenarios:

A) I pay you $x per year not to listen to music on youtube.

B) I give you $x per year. Simoultaneously, Youtube starts charging $x per year to listen to music.

Is there much of a difference between them?

Logically, no. But most of humanity would not treat them equivalently. I'm sure Tversky or Kahneman have done something on this topic.

Yes, lots of differences: - you can invest $10 for a month, get small profit and than start listening music - you can sign-up for Spotify for $7 a month and get $3 back.

How are these differences? You can do this in either case.

Presumably, though, once someone offered you more than $10 a month, you could just pay for another streaming music service. I think the whole idea here is that paying someone to not use a service means they then use that money on some alternative - whether it is a social network, music streaming app, or anything else you can spend money on to pass the time.

I wouldn't spend money on a replacement social network if you paid me not to use facebook, but I certainly would put that money towards something else I found fun and entertaining.

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