The Price of Free
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
On one hand, I am somewhat sympathetic to the argument (Research seems to be funded at least partially in the same way at universities), but overall, if the great masses lack taste and are satisfied with their reality TV, books like Twilight, and Windows PCs, why should they be taxed to pay for the few aristocrats that demand literature?
Or, if the value of such things is great enough, then the demand will be there to pay for it.
Disclaimer: My OS is Vista, I like watching CSI, and I've liked books that are as empty as Twilight is rumored to be.
As a hypothetical, assume that perception of quality within a domain is actually a trained skill, improved by incremental refinement via new experiences within the domain. Further, assume that highly-trained individuals can perceive greater detail, and from that can derive greater enjoyment. That is, a novice is overwhelmed by a few of the most obvious features, whereas an expert picks out subtleties and contrasts and has a richer, more enjoyable experience (there may be a parallel here to the blub paradox).
Under such a scenario, most novices (being unable to perceive subtleties) would tend to congregate around only a few examples in the domain that happen to provide the best experience at the broad, obvious level; a local maximum of enjoyment. However, by persuading a novice to experience additional examples that at the obvious levels may seem less appealing, they will gain both expertise and a deeper enjoyment of the domain, at the expense of growing bored with the simpler examples that lack subtleties.
New creations in the domain seeking to maximize exposure would tend to the minimum complexity level needed to appeal to a sufficiently large portion of the population. Lower complexity means fewer people expanding their experiences, reducing the overall level of expertise, lowering the minimum, and so on. Given the assumption earlier that experts obtain greater enjoyment from the domain, this results in a globally suboptimal outcome from individually sensible choices.
Of course, a fair number of people would disagree with one or both of the assumptions above (myself included). But I suspect many people who bemoan loss of quality would to some extent agree with the scenario I described, wherein quality is indeed valuable without there being demand for it.
Value is derived from demand and supply. If there is no demand, there can be no value. If there is demand, there will be value (per supplied unit) if the supply isn't too plentiful.
This should mean that, in your example, entry level content should be plentiful and cheap, while the advanced content should be scarce and expensive. Hopefully for the producers of advanced content, the advanced audience will get so much more enjoyment per unit of content that they feel the higher price is justified.
To say that more people "should" go through the effort of learning to like the advanced content is pretty elitist, but most of all it doesn't take into consideration everything that they are doing in their lives. Just because some college students think it's worthwhile to learn the intricacies of some obscure tv series it doesn't mean that it's worthwhile for everyone else.
I suspect that the post you are responding to disagrees with this (at least hypothetically). They contend that value is a more-or-less innate quality that the skilled are best at recognizing. Stating your position baldly isn't a particularly strong counterargument.
To say that more people "should" go through the effort of learning to like the advanced content is pretty elitist
Doesn't matter whether it's elitist, in the same way that it doesn't matter whether Darwin caused the Holocaust. The fact that the consequences are unpleasant does not mean that the assertion is untrue.
Value, in the money sense, is what someone is prepared to pay. That's the kind of value I was referring to.
Doesn't matter whether it's elitist, in the same way that it doesn't matter whether Darwin caused the Holocaust.
Godwin's law.
The fact that the consequences are unpleasant does not mean that the assertion is untrue.
You ignored the second part of my conclusion: everyone has limited time, and they have to select a subset of what is possible that they will actually do.
Also: the post I was responding to was talking about trying to maximize global enjoyment, and proposed that if everyone decided to become experts in a single narrow field of content everyone would be better off. This, however, is also unlikely to find the global maximum. How will everyone know which tiny subfield has the biggest potential for enjoyment? Without trying a lot of different routes to enjoyment, it's very unlikely that they will choose the best one by pure chance. Compare this to genetic algorithms; you need randomness to escape a local maximum.
Another problem with the proposed solution is that different people have different personalities and it's very unlikely that a single narrow field will appeal to everyone. Some subset of the population will get lots of enjoyment, while another subset will be bored to tears. That's not going to improve average enjoyment.
Which is indeed one possible definition of the word, but not the most useful one in a world where rational economic agents don't exist. The average person's intuitive sense of how much they value something doesn't necessarily bear any relation to how much they'd pay for it.
For instance, in memetichazard's post above: "Or, if the value of such things is great enough, then the demand will be there to pay for it." Under the economic definition of value this can be loosely paraphrased as "If people are willing to pay enough for these things, there will be enough to demand to pay for it", a statement which is tautological and rather inane, allowing us to infer that memetichazard probably intended some other meaning for "value".
Under any other definition of "value", including most common use, it's entirely possible (or even likely) for something to have a value unrelated to its price or market demand.
If (as the article seems to suggest) consumers can get high-value programs as well as low-value programs for the same "free" price , the value of the program isn't going to matter too much from a revenue perspective (for the program producer).
That will result in the end of high-value programs that are expensive to produce. It won't be the first time that people make short-term decisions that hurt them in the long-term
Hypothetically, an individual may consider a video to be high-value. Yet, if the video is pirated and if most people see the video without paying anything to the video-maker, the video-maker may stop making these videos.
Now, from a monetary perspective, your comment may make sense. Because of piracy, the video-maker did not make a lot of money from the video. However, I would still consider the hypothetical video to be high-value.
Certain creative pursuits, like TV shows, might get back to its cheaper, more natural roots. I'm sure the cost of making a good TV show wasn't this high in the past. The cost is getting higher partly because of the competition for talents.
With less money in the system, it's true that some talents will move to another industry, but many will stay and accept a less extravaganza lifestyle (which is not a great thing to emulate for the society at large anyway). People who really love doing the stuff will likely want to do it no matter what.
Of course, certain sorts of movies/shows like those which requires a huge amount of detailed computer graphics will be harder to come by, but that doesn't spell the end of creative works.
Lower cost for the whole system could potentially result in better quality (of a different kind) because of less focus on techniques and more on the arts and concepts.
So then the young bucks come in and say, "I can do this for less!"
Saṃsāra
Unless you're suggesting that television shows should all be made on a "work for a share of profits" or "work for free to get recognition" basis (i.e., like a start-up or an open-source project respectively). I don't really see most people being able to do that, though.
For example, if you look for the latest hits on Youtube, you will see that most of them started posting videos there, for free.
The same thing is happening with the music industry. Just because the record labels see a clear pattern towards electronic consumption doesn't mean that clinging to the old model as long as possible isn't the most profitable strategy.
They may not be as profitable for each individual company, but the pie is growing overall. More people than ever before are able to practice music as a profession. Consumer choice has never been greater.
If that comes at the expense of the big four, you'll have to forgive my lack of tears.
Then again, I'm a quite different person than record label executives, so I shouldn't expect they'd think anything like me on the issue...
Just look at Youtube. Most of that stuff is utter crap. Just because you find the occasional gem doesn't mean that the site's not full of crap.
Watching stuff on youtube for me is really like taping radio as a youngster. Now it's going back for old music video clips and tv shows. One persons crap is someone else's scarce resource.