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Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

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inetknght·

Frankly, I do not understand your logic.

If it costs everyone $1000, there will be many many many people who cannot afford that.

If it costs only me $1000, I'd stop using it because... well I already stopped using it so I did it for free actually.

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First case, that's the point. Nobody would use it so everybody would move onto something else.

Second case, being the only one out (i.e. the black sheep) means you might consider paying for it to not stand out.

A roundabout way of saying "I don't use Facebook so I'm better than you"

The logic is that Facebook is currently worth $1000 but would be worth much less because of the many people who would stop using it if it had that cost.

Similar logic also works the other way. If someone really offered all Facebook users $1000 to quit for a year, almost everyone would quit because even those who currently value it above $1000 know that it won't be worth that much after most of their network quits. The actual cost to get, say, 50% of users to quit is probably much less than $1000 apiece.

Does paying addicts to stop smoking work? If that doesn't then the same will apply here.

First yes I think it does. Second this is more like paying people not to smoke a particular brand - they could change to another.

I'll need some proof of your claim. It makes no sense to me. Cos the intuitive thing is for addicts to use that money for binge smoking.

Huh, nicotine dependency doesn't really work like that. Most smokers don't spend all their money on cigarettes, and go on smoking binges when they have more money...

Source: I smoke, and about half the people I know do too.

Oh, now that makes sense. Thanks.

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