The lighthouse in economics (1974) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The lighthouse in economics (1974) [pdf]

courses.cit.cornell.edu

46 pointsmooreds7 comments

I would love to read a synthesis of the ideas in this paper with the economics of open source software development, which have distinct similarities.

Somewhat related: There was an Open Source, Bitcoin-based, crowdfunding project (now defunct, I believe) created by Mike Hearn named "Lighthouse": https://news.bitcoin.com/an-old-mike-hearn-crowdfunding-proj...

Note: The link I provided above is for a later relaunch of the project on Bitcoin Cash.

See: The Lighthouse in Economics (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lighthouse_in_Economics

Elodie Bertrand's critique is worth considering: https://cv.archives-ouvertes.fr/elodie-bertrand

It seems to me one of the primary requirements of business, and a large reason many good ideas don’t exist, is that capitalism requires a way to exchange money.

Without a way to accept payments and prohibit access to something otherwise easily accessible, a business can’t be made around it.

We can think of DRM or IP as prohibiting access, but there’s plenty of real life examples. A public park is cordoned off for a concert which requires payment to get into. A natural harbor has docks built into it and a fee is charged to boats that stop there.

For a while at Philz you would order your coffee directly with the barista, pay at the cashier, and then pick up the coffee. This baffled so many people because it disrupted the normal "gate" that is paying when you order. Also there was an honor system that you would pay for what you ordered. It would have been pretty easy to lie to the cashier about what you ordered. I have noticed that since the Pandemic most Philz stores now follow the traditional ordering pattern.

> Without a way to accept payments and prohibit access to something otherwise easily accessible, a business can’t be made around it.

Unless you have dominance assured contracts aka kickstarter, allowing for things to be paid for, produced and consumed, with no necessary relationship between payment and consumption. Or you could have an advertising supported model where again there is no necessary relationship between consumption and spending.

Well, but privately held lighthouses did exist before govt stepped in, to the surprise of some economists who claimed they shouldn't have.

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