Must everything be free all the time?

@zen But I am paying for it with my time and all the data they mine about me and the subsequent spam and pop-ups that will forever follow me as long as I am alive and on line! Hell they should pay me….more! ;)

I said I’d pay a bit! I think it’s worth it. But for me, Fluther is more of an entertainment venue, and I budget for those pretty rigidly. As many and varied and interesting as the Jellies are, I take all of the “learned” information with a bit of a grain of salt, as there is really no way to vet the personal sources.

No, not everything should be free, but look at television and PBS. Sometimes the best things in life should be free to the general public. Let those who want to help, and can afford to donate keep it up and running. Why should the poor suffer and not be allowed some free entertainment and educational resources.

I think you are asking whether fluther would be worth paying for in order to keep it going.

I think it would be for me, although I also think I would be worth paying for—and I’m probably worth a lot more to fluther than fluther is to me. That’s my opinion, anyway. In the past, it seems like I have wildly underestimated my value to others. It’s not easy for me to say that in public.

I think that what I say could be marketed as a distinct and interesting voice that other people would probably be willing to pay for. I am, no doubt, deluded, but then I blame all those people who have told me I’m a good writer. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I actually finally believed it and people shot me down? Well, shoot away.

The site isn’t “free”, and it never has been.

National Public Radio (“NPR” to US users) and Public Broadcasting System (“PBS” television in the US) also aren’t “free”, despite what some think. While we’re on the topic, neither is free public education.

There are costs – unknown to the users, perhaps, but actual dollars-and-cents costs – involved with hosting and managing the site. So far those costs are borne by the owners of the site, offset by whatever revenues they can generate by licensing the “Fluther-powered Q&A”, T-shirt sales and advertising (which I never see, anyway).

If you’re asking if I would pay a nominal annual subscription fee, same for all users (maybe after a “free” three-month trial period, for example), then I’d probably agree to that. The Fluther community is pretty large, I expect that the costs are not very high, and I don’t think we’d lose so many members to a “nominal” dues, that I’d be okay with that.

But I agree with @wundayatta that for many – most? – of us frequent responders (and questioners, too) we add far more value in our responses than we receive from “answers to our questions”. And I think that the real value of the site has yet to be mined: personal tidbits that we’ve each left about ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly, tied to email and IP addresses, geographic regions and time… a lot of value there.

If charges apply to questions, then that would tend to choke them off, strangling the site’s growth – and day to day use by current members. If charges apply to responses, then the quantity of responses – and the interplay among members that makes the place a “community” – would also shrivel. If charges apply to lurve given, then that’ll dry up and / or be gamed.

@WasCy I do know there are costs that some users are not aware of. But as a user sitting in my home, Fluther is free for me to use (besides the cost of internet, electricity, etc.). Same as PBS, local broadcasting and radio.

Things like health care and education should be “free.” And I’d love it if we had wifi everywhere on the planet for free, that would be good.
Oh and free and renewable & sustainable energy would be good too.

Oh and um… consumerism is pretty darn bad. And… capitalism too probably. The problem is, we don’t know how to quit our addiction to imaginary things (gods, and money) cold turkey. I don’t know if there is a governance system out there that truly is perfect, seamless and functional. Although there is this exciting form of economy.

I think everything must be free, that way we can understand it’s true value.

I don’t get it… What exactly, would one be paying for if Fluther charged a fee? Or is the OP saying there should be a fee if we want the owners of this site to keep it up and running?
Sorry, I still wouldn’t pay.

You get what you pay for…

Somebody once told me that Norton was better than Avira because it cost money despite the fact that laboratory testing proved otherwise. And Linux is free yet many governments and super-computers use it because it’s better than Windows in many instances. There are many more examples outside of the computer world.

I suppose the obvious counter is, “Must everything be for profit?”.

@jerv Good point.

Gadzooks! There is nothing that do not have a cost to it. People want to enjoy said items, services etc because it is free. The main reason many people want it free is because we are not rich, we don’t want to spend the money because we want to spend it other places; add to the fact we think we are making someone else rich we want to pay even less. Everything has a cost no matter who pays for it.

No one really wants to trade much to get something free. If Fluther ever got shaky in its finances and wanted to say, farm the info of us Flutheronians out to interested company and businesses people would have a cow….even though they would still get and enjoy Fluther for free. Partly we have been conditioned for a long time to love the ideal of free but have all the perks.

Education is not free, it maybe free to the student attending at the time but it is not free; I pay for it and I have no children and I am not in K-12 grades, I am long done with that. The school isn’t given free water, electricity, paper, food, etc that I know of. The groundskeepers and janitors are not donating their time, and the students don’t have to share class time doing those things either.

If I had it like Trump, Gates, Winfrey, etc. I would not waste time going 5 blocks out of the way or half a mile out of the way because that is where the cheaper fueling station was or the less expensive place to pay for shoes. I am making more while I sleep than I can spend by the day so I would not worry about running short of cash, I would buy what I wanted, when I wanted, where I wanted and not give a thought to “can I afford this? Will it mess up my budget” The was a saying and I can’t remember who said it but it went something like ”Don’t think of how much it cost, think about how much you can earn to make it affordable”?

If Fluther started to charge it would be a concern right now, but if the cost was not too high and I got additional cool features for being a paid member I might buy into one of the not so pricy packages or something. Everything isn’t free and shouldn’t be, if it were what would be the value in that? If it is free it will be abuse out of apathy and then it would really be cheap.

If you provide a service without fee, and you then later start charging, you should expect your users to complain. If your service is not markedly different from others which are available for free then you should expect your users to abandon you en masse. There is no reason I can see why the users of Fluther should reward the owners for poor planning in regard to their company’s revenue apart from charity.
Also, this question is specifically to do with Fluther, is it not? Must you drag “everything” into the discussion?

I happen to be an advocate of Free Software. This is software that is licensed and distributed in such a way as to preserve the freedom of its users and authors(free as in freedom. It’s not necessarily software distributed without cost (free as in beer), and none of it has been developed without cost.

There are some things which come without cost. Sunlight, gravity and air are examples (for now). Water used to be an example, but no longer. What doesn’t come without cost is human effort and ingenuity (unless it’s mine, I do a lot of free work).

No, not everything has to be for profit. That’s pretty well established.

But everything has to be paid for. That’s pretty fundamental, too.

Despite what people might think, Linux and Open Office aren’t “free”. They’re supported by their respective developers, who have their own reasons (if only ‘pride of authorship’ at times) in doing that. But those costs are borne by someone. All costs are. The question is, “by whom?” (The secondary question is: “How much?”)

But we are paying for it. We give Fluther free content, and they give us free access. It’s a win-win scenario. Some time ago, one of the mods told me that Fluther makes their income from non-members who browse the site and see the ads. Being members, we don’t see the ads and aren’t aware of them.

like @HungryGuy said. And I pay for it every month in the internet bill, if people want to get paid for the content they have online, I don’t think it’d be unfair for them to go badger the service providers for it, since they are making a KILLING.

It would be a bit much to pay 50–70 bucks a month for internet AND THEN 10 bucks a month per site you would want to be a part of . . . I’d probably quit the net… except to do the basics like pay bills online.

“It seems that if it isn’t free (online) then forget it. When did this happen?”

Day 1.

The internet has always been this way, and if the internet is going to have any long-term staying power then it needs to remain free. No one is going to press a button that costs money to press.

Personally, I would not pay for any service online. I may pay for a physical product, or maybe even a virtual product, but I won’t pay for services. My reason, no matter what the service is, someone else is already offering it for free some other place, and if not, you can always make your own.

I think Amazon, iTunes, eBay and a lot of other low-cost and extremely high volume sellers are falsifying your assertion, @poisonedantidote. In fact, I see a huge growth opportunity for whoever can perfect vanishingly small transaction costs to permit instantaneous under 50¢ (USD denomination) sales. People seem to have no problem hitting the buttons to download $1 songs and ring tones. (And I’m finding it easier and easier to download $5 – $10 e-books into my Nook.)

@WasCy Making money on the internet has come a very long way since dial up, this is true. Also, Amazon, iTunes, eBay and other such sites do make money.

But yes, I should clarify. When I say the internet needs to remain free to have long-term staying power, I’m talking about the internet. The real real internet, not the bastardized monstrosity corporations would gladly turn it in to.

In other words, if in 20 years time, you pay your service provider for a package, and there are these limitations and these limitations and other sites cost extra, then by my standards, my assertion would be correct, and the internet would be gone.

From what I read, it has happened to both radio and television in the past, and it looks like it is happening to the internet.

If we wind up with a few thousand giant sites and cloud networking and no net neutrality, there will be no internet in my eyes, and paying for services online would seem to me at least, to be the first run on that ladder.

A store (amazon), a record shop (iTunes) and an auction house (e-bay) do not an internet make.

But yes, it is not impossible to make money on the internet, and a little profit wont kill it off. But if the internet is exposed to and subject to the full-blown greed of man, then it will surely fall.

could be wrong, i cant predict the future

EDIT: Yes, I am fully aware that what I just said is a pile of semantics, slippery slope fallacy and bullshit. But I still stand by it.

If I’m honest, out of Amazon, iTunes, and eBay, I only really consider Amazon and eBay to be “true” sites (yes, lets throw in a no true scotsman fallacy while im at it).

@poisonedantidote I’m well aware of all the anti-corporate mentality that pervades so much of… this privileged society that owes if not every bit of its very existence, then certainly most of its relative comfort, to the fact and products of corporations… hmm… but I never quite understand it. Especially when so many of those making the anti-corporate arguments are so (apparently) well educated, yet they fail to see the irony and hypocrisy of the complaint (composed and transmitted from computers over the internet using energy… and in many cases using transmission facilities, wireless hotspots and even seating, tables and refreshment provided by… evil corporations out to make a buck). That, I don’t get at all. Be as ‘Thoreau’ as you want, but don’t pretend to do it from Starbuck’s on a non-hand-crafted computer over the internet, cloud or no cloud. God didn’t put it there.

I see a much different future than the one you seem to decry.

I see the death of newspapers, for instance, sadly in some cases, because I grew up with them and I like them… but I see them being replaced by columnists and reporters that we (individual “we”) each can assemble into our own daily reports, or “virtual newspapers” concocted (and sold) for a pittance via individual transactions. And I see no shame or evil in that. I think it’ll be a great way to decentralize a lot of thinking, expose curious readers to a lot more talent and ideas than they may be exposed to via a subscription (such as my current one) to the Hartford Courant. I can read all of the Boston Globe and New York Times and Wall Street Journal… and Le Monde, The Guardian and others if I’m so inclined (I know that I can now, because those papers’ websites are an adjunct to the paper and ink product that keeps them going, but when the paper and ink no longer sells… something has to). Good writers don’t work for free.

Yeah, I can search out a lot of blogs and free content, but aside from the porn industry (which always seems to make money first out of new media), I see tremendous upside to the use and utility of the Internet. And that will happen when it can be a reliable money-maker for the people who want to not only produce but organize and distribute content. Amazon, iTunes, eBay, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Apart from the business-to-business that has been really driving the growth of the infrastructure – it hasn’t been put there for YouTube videos to go viral; it’s been put in place to make money. The fact that we can view YouTube and so many other sites “for free” is just a happy coincidence of the hardware growth… made possible by the corporations that so many seem to hate.

I understand what you guys are saying – and I appreciate the dialogue, however, isn’t it a bit like TV where you get basic but have to pay extra for certain channels? Here it’s like that.

@WasCy Companies != corporations. Some are, some are not. Individuals are rarely corporations, though there do exist corporations which comprise some legal entity.
It’s important, I think, to point out that a “corporation” is nothing but a legal structure. By itself it produces nothing and invents nothing, and indeed performs no actions whatever.
The company (that is, the collection of people) that forms the corporation does all these things. Some of these are organized as corporations, some are not. Most but not all corporations are organized to increase shareholder value. Shareholders are sometimes but not necessarily “stakeholders”. Boards of directors are mostly but not always filled with shareholders- in fact the majority shareholders generally represent the ‘pool’ from which the board members are chosen.
None of this is written in stone, and relatively little of it is enshrined in law; but due to custom and inertia nearly all corporations wind up organized for the sole mandate of increasing shareholder value. Since shareholders can instantly liquidate their shares, they have no incentive to stick around unless their share value increases in a given quarter. The larger shareholders, who make up the board, typically have the power to fire the CEO if their shares do not increase in value within a given quarter, and historically have not been shy in doing so.

My “energy” is provided by a public utility. That particular utility is not incorporated, though many are.
My internet connection is provided by a partnership, not a corporation. (Not an LLC, iow)
The internet itself was started by public universities and DARPA, and its initial infrastructure expansion was funded and partly performed by the federal government and other governments around the world. Some governments even had the foresight to maintain ownership of their own backbone… but I digress.

You seem baffled by the “anti-corporate sentiment” of people using products produced by corporations- but to be “anti-corporate” is not to be “anti-business”.

Metafilter charges five bucks to join. But they do that to stop spammers and tweens wondering about the dream they had. It works well.

@koanhead

You’re correct in everything you say, and I don’t dispute it. But don’t overlook or minimize that “federal government” and “public utility” are merely different forms of incorporation.

My point is that “companies” form “corporations” (for the most part) in order to expand and to take on risks that individuals and small companies simply can’t afford to do. There’s a reason why we have the material goods that we do in the West (and now the East) and not in primarily tribal and non business-oriented cultures. It’s not that people in those cultures are stupid, but they have chosen, some deliberately and some because of simple remoteness and other facts of nature, to remain closer to nature. There’s nothing at all wrong with that, but name me one unincorporated company (or tribe, or individual) that:

produces computer chips
produces power generating equipment
produces electric power ‘to the grid’ (in amounts more than it receives from the grid)
has added to the internet backbone – ever

@WasCy I know a few people that qualify on that third one.

@WasCy

Produces computer chips: Many universities have done so on a non-commercial basis including University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain, former home of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Also MIT. I can’t think of any who produce them currently.

Produces power generating equipment: Michael Dummann, and myself. (I built a power-generating windmill years ago.) Also I’ve met several farmers who have converted old pump-style windmills to generate electricity.

Produces excess electrical power to the grid: Roger Swearingen.

Has added to the internet backbone: DARPA.

Or did you mean name one that does all of the above? I think you’d have trouble naming a corporation that does all the above.

I agree on the risk-deferring advantages of corporate structure. I’m not a knee-jerk anti-corporate type, and I hope I did not give that impression. I do feel, however that corporate law needs to be radically restructured.

I also claim that the internet “as we know it” is doomed if current trends continue. I don’t see any possibility of the worldwide networks remaining (or becoming) a medium for the free exchange of ideas unless individuals and non-profit organizations take over and begin building our own infrastructure. It’s something that for-profit carriers have no incentive to do while they can commoditize network access and feature-sets through artificial scarcity.

@koanhead

Saying that DARPA and a state university are not corporations is mere semantics. Other than a profit motive (which we agree that not all corporations share anyway), in what essential ways are they so different?

The other micro examples that you and @jerv give more or less make my point, it seems. You can find the odd enterprise or private citizen who does on a shoestring level what corporations do at a mega level on a daily basis. Why do you suppose they don’t rule their markets, then?

But I’m not a corporate fanboy.

I will agree that anything that humans do could probably be done better than it is. I think one of the worst things about corporations, in fact, is the alliances that they form with government. Those are truly evil. But I ask which entity invited which to join, and it seems to me that it was government and politicians who made the overtures, who nearly always make the overtures, to invite the alliances that restrict domestic and foreign competition, raise barriers to entry and generally work in collusion to over-regulate industry in general so that their own markets can be preserved.

But this is straying from the original question that @zen asked.

So to attempt to close this argument and get back to @zen‘s question, it seems to me that the goods we have in the quantities we have, and at the generally high quality we have come to expect and for the affordable prices that we find, we can thank (I thank, anyway) the corporate sponsors of most of the six to seven billion people living today.

In fact, one of the things that I wonder about frequently – getting back to the question, finally – is why so much high quality stuff is free on the internet. It’s not free to produce and maintain; that much is certain.

I think you need to read Makers by Cory Doctorow for a different take on that one. And with things like the Reprap around, it really isn’t as far-fetched as you’d think. Remember the days when it was thought that nobody would want/need a computer in the home?

As for why so much high quality stuff is free on the internet, the ‘net is a bad example since many things are put out by bored altruistic people. Sure, some have commercialized Linux, but the truth is that it started as just a hobby of a crazy Finn, and many pieces of freeware are just some code-monkey that was unhappy with not being able to find just the right program to do what they wanted the way they wanted to, wrote a program like they wanted to use, and decided to just throw it out into the ether for all to enjoy.

@WasCy To call my claim that DARPA is not a corporation “mere semantics” is not merely a gross misrepresentation of the facts but a blunt insult to the legacy of Alfred Korzybski. Semantics is an important subject and does not deserve to be an excuse for dismissal of ideas.

That aside, I agree with some of your points. The union of governmental and corporate power is a bad thing, to be sure. However, governments did not “invite” corporations to join them. Government (specifically the British government) actually created the corporate structure. For hundreds of years all corporations were creatures of the governments under which they were chartered, particularly in the United States which had had run-ins with runaway corporate power before (who do you suppose owned all that tea that got dumped in Boston Harbor?) This led to very restrictive corporate laws in the US- states issued charters to corporations, and were responsible for actions taken by them. If a corporation acted in a fashion contrary to its charter (which many states granted only in cases that would “serve the public interest” then the state could revoke the charter (without so much as a hearing in some cases) and seize the corporation’s assets.
This state of affairs began to erode in the 1800’s, most notably under Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, after which it was decided as a matter of legal precedence that corporations were officially “persons”.
In my view it’s wrong to regard a corporation as a person. It’s enough that it’s a legal entity that can own property and be subject to liability.

Who are your corporate sponsors? I’m pretty sure I haven’t any. I have been employed be several corporations, but they certainly weren’t “sponsoring” me- they were paying for services rendered. I think that very, very few of this world’s billions receive corporate sponsorship.

For the great quantity, quality, and affordability of goods available to us, we have technology to thank. Frankly, most of it was developed outside of the corporate purview.
Henry Ford invented the assembly line before Ford Motor Company existed; James Watt invented the steam engine before any corporation existed; Bell and others invented telephones (and switching systems) before AT&T came to pass.

As for the prevalence of high quality software available for free: the key point is that the cost of distribution has dwindled to nearly nothing, and that as @jerv points out developers are willing to spend time working on a tool that they use. Since it costs them nothing to share it, they also reap the benefits of others who also use the same tool and add their efforts to the project for the same reason.

Well, I see I’ve written a book. Enjoy.

@koanhead And you put that book on the internet for free!

Corporate America has taken over.. Give them an inch and they’ll own the internet THEN what’ll you do? Why, you’ll have to pay for the priveledge, and be taxed and sur-charged and hidden taxed and….....