Reminds of an exchange, potentially misattributed ([1]) to Picasso:
A woman approaches Picasso in a restaurant, asks him to scribble something on a napkin and says she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, "That will be $10,000."
"But you did that in thirty seconds," the astonished woman replied.
"No," Picasso said. "It has taken me forty years to do that."
A woman approaches Yves Saint Laurent, "Oh Yves, I must have a unique hat for tonights' gala".
The master seats her, grabs a bunch of ribbons and proceeds to drape her hair in what turns out to be an extremely nice and harmonic creation, and all that in the space of 30 minutes.
The woman is ecstatic: "Oh Yves, I knew you would come through, how much do I owe you?"
"That will be 10,000 Francs"
"10,000 Francs? For 30 minutes?"
Without a word the couturier unwinds the ribbons, spools them up nicely and hands the spools to the lady. "The ribbon you get for free.".
I wonder how much the person who makes up all these amusing anecdotes about famous people having to quibble about their payment rate gets paid. Probably not enough.
The one we were told at University was the contractor who charged £5,000 for a few hours work fixing a design, which in the end took five pencil marks. When asked to break down the costs of the job he resubmitted the invoice as: 5x 1 pencil mark = 5x £1 = £5, 1x knowing where to make the marks = 1x £4,995 = £4,995, with an offer of a discount on future pencil marks if the invoice was paid promptly.
I have a very large file with lots of 1s and 0s in it, you can have them for free. If you want them ordered and that ordering takes me a year or so then I expect to be paid. Knowledge and experience are the result of an investment in time and effort on account of the person with the knowledge. They usually expect some kind of return on that investment unless it was done for hobby purposes.
Whether 'regular' labor and mental labor are compensated fairly is something worth discussing but 'materials' are rarely the major cost of anything.
Yes, open source is very powerful. But it is also the exception and if you want a piece of bespoke software you're likely going to have to pay someone for it. It's pretty rare that someone would say 'I need some software to do 'x'' and then magically a team of talented individuals jumps forward to say 'we will provide it for free' and will maintain it for free to boot for the rest of its service life.
Software has very little reproduction cost, but behind that function call is a lot of stuff written by people who in turn were simply paid for their work.
True altruism is rare, and even if there are lots of open source examples of exactly that that still makes it exceptional and mostly because people already wanted to write a particular piece of software.
I had assumed the 1s and 0s referred to binary notation, and the file they were being ordered in was an executable of some sort, and the ordering was in the writing of the code that when compiled produced the 1s and 0s in the order wanted.
I would not suggest you file.sort() the file with 1s and 0s.
Why should you be entitled to the mental labor of others? What good is it to spend years studying and doing work in a field if one can’t charge more specifically for that knowledge and experience?
I answered in a comment below with potentiel food for thoughts. Let's be serious, it's a utopia, but the philosophical path is interesting to walk through.
Your concerns are valid, yes, but only if you value money over self-accomplishment.
I learn skills for myself, not for others. It's about investing in yourself, the output is not necessarily money. You can learn dance classes, it'll never pay-off, but you'll feel more accomplished.
Furthermore, from my perspective, money is unfair and is not a reflection of social value.
Because not the most deserving people are earning the most (the farmer who feeds others, vs, someone sharing pictures on OnlyFans).
I often speak with people who are smarter than me, and they share their knowledge with me for free. One example is for machine learning. In return I do share my other discoveries in fields I know better.
In the short-term, it looks better to keep the knowledge secret. But in the long-run everybody benefits.
The others still have their knowledge, I have new knowledge, and together we can build something better.
I'm very grateful to people who share what they know without charging me every minute like if I'm on a phone sex-line.
And the best lessons are actually free (YCombinator, Bill Gates, Physics classes, etc).
Sure, it's great to get things for free and it's nice when people give away what they've learned, but that's their choice, not yours.
You're effectively criticizing people for not giving away their investment for free.
Also, you mention that money is unfair and is not a reflection of social value? What is the social value in being a lock smith? If you spend most of your day working as a lock smith for "social value", then you're expecting others to do the same. How does it work when you need something from someone else, but they "don't have the time" or just don't feel like doing it. "Social value" has less actual value than a social contract, but... getting back to money being unfair... Money is a way to pass value between entities, be they people or companies or other. I will pay money to a lock smith (again, just using a random previous example in this thread) and he will use that money for something he needs or finds value in.
Value is also highly subjective, hence the widely varying prices people are willing to pay for things or services. Though, as long as there are enough people willing to pay for a thing or service at the given price/rate, then it will be sold for that price/rate.
One last note, when it comes to information, which is not the actual work, I think you're underestimating the value gained by the person appearing to give the information away. On the internet, if you're writing articles for free, based on your experience, that you also sell to your employer as "work", you're probably getting something else out of it as well. Maybe recognition, hoping for a better job, or maybe just gaining experience in writing.
I was taking a globalist approach, of course it's not realistic.
This view was inspired by a documentary (called Zeitgeist if I'm right), where machines provide subsistance to humans, so humans can focus on creative and artistic tasks without having to focus (including science).
It's a far-fetched view, but in the long-term, I believe (and again, it's just a personal belief) that sharing is caring and that caring is very important. You certainly need a way of subsistance but I see that the incentive are incorrect.
The person who fixes the door locks for example, has incentive to charge you the most and make the process as difficult as possible, not to go the fastest away from your place.
I'm in favour of a system where everyone gets a basic income (to subsist for shelter, food and all basic needs) and they can (but don't have to) work if they want extra money.
You're right, not all the pieces fit together, but it's an interesting thought to start with :)
How'd you incentivize someone to keep these machines up and running for eternity? Or is there another jump here that the machines will be eternal?
There is going to be new threats that show up (covid is a great example / alien attack is on the other end of the spectrum) - how do you plan to protect against these? Are you willing to leave these to volunteer willpower?
If you also notice the set of folks for whom subsistence is guaranteed (countries with good social nets / folks who have made enough money) keep working and trying to climb up the ladder. Do you think there is a baser instinct here (peacocking / self reliance / pessimism about future ...) at work?
At some point, you have to move away from the 'spherical chicken in a vacuum' arguments to have a reasonable discussion :)
This reminds me of the story my Dad told me a lot when I was younger.
A factory manager calls a repairman to fix a malfunctioning piece of equipment. The repairman shows up, looks at the machine and taps it once with a hammer. The machine works great again! Then he hands the manager an invoice for $4000. The manager is indignant, "That's ridiculous! I want an itemized invoice!"
Just almost a good example. In this case, the biggest part from the bill would be the time to drive to your home. Also it is not just one minute work. It is also the time he took the phone call, prepare, maybe load some special tools on the car, then drive, work, drive back, clean everything, replace some tools, oils, make the paperwork and so on.
I did once a kind of such work as electrician, once on a weekend I got a pikett call, the work was done in 10 minutes. I wrote 1.5 hours, then of course a drama .. but finally, even these 1.5 hours was not enought with all the time I spend frome home to back home this saturday morning, because she could not open here electric door.
Ha. In my case it was 700€, took 3 people and 3 hours, a crossbar broke in half and afterwards the security door needed to be replaced anyway (because at the end they cut it open with an angle grinder). All that at 1 o'clock in the morning. Nobody of the neighbors cared or called the police.
0/10, wouldn't recommend the experience to anyone else. I could have done the same for free.
Fun fact: The companies boss paused his anniversary dinner for this job (after two of his employees couldn't do it). He and his wife showed up super nicely dressed (Highheels and everything). He promised he would make it up to her another time. I found it amusing.
Sounds like you got a really good deal! 3 persons in the middle of the night on short notice doing a specialized task for you, with successful results. And you got a good story out of it too!
Too bad about their dinner and your neighbors not caring.
Speaking of which there are some croocked locksmiths out there who pretend they cant lockpick the lock, try a few different methods to fail and add to labor and eventually drill through the core, damage the lock, charge you more than 500 and additional few hundred to replace the lock. It happened to my friend’s mom. Sometimes it’s experience but sometimes it’s just overcharging. If it’s higher than market price it may overcharging or better quality
Honestly, if someone drives all the way to my house and back at my convenience (e.g. when I’m locked out), and only charges me €150 I would consider that fairly cheap.
>You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute.
On the flip side, this was used at one of the first jobs I worked as a teenager selling scummy informational CDs. It isn't that you're paying 6 payments of $29.99 for some CDs, you're paying for John Doe's expert, secret knowledge. We were instructed to use this rebuttal if a customer balked at the price for some CDs.
In the case of locksmiths, yes, because it's easy to open most consumer locks. I just can't do it for friends, or even a lock on a home I rent, because I don't own the physical lock. That 150 euro bill is basically regulatory capture.
My locksmith friend has a private policy where immediate personal friends get free lock work in exchange for personal favors at a later date. E.g. he helped me with a broken car lock, then later I did some data recovery for one of his family members pro bono.
I thought this was going to end something like "so the locksmith comes back the next day and locks you out of your home for two hours. '150€ please. Happy now?'"
I've heard a similar thing about paying a plumber for knowing where/how to strike the hammer. It also occurred to me that some of my work looks trivial when done--a very small source change that fixes broken edge cases by making something invisible more regular or consistent.
Edit: After shipping the changes and winning the case, send the PR diffs.
You call the locksmith.
He arrives, looks at the door, fiddles with the lock for one minute, opens the door then leaves.
The next day you receive the bill, 150€.
Are you mad for spending so much for one minute of work?
You shouldn’t: you paid for the experience that allowed him to open it in 1 minute.
—
Recalling it from a discussion with a friend of mine on a related subject: the cost of experience.