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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!grkermit!larry
From: larry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The poster should pay for news
Message-ID: <516@grkermit.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Jul-83 11:47:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: grkermit.516
Posted: Mon Jul 25 11:47:24 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Jul-83 16:24:34 EDT
References: <796@utcsstat.UUCP> <5575@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: GenRad Inc., Concord, MA
Lines: 46

The whole beauty of the USENET is its inherent democracy.  Any person
is able to communicate to any other person or group of people on the
net without regard to his/her financial status, agressiveness, or whatever
other circumstance might ordinarily prevent him/her from getting an
idea accross.  To start charging people on a per item basis would turn
USENET into nothing but a fancy telephone system.  Most people are not
going to pay to get mail from strangers, especially ones who disagree
with them.  And who can really afford to pay to send out personal
opinion items.  
	In a pay per item system, the personal cost becomes too great
compared to the personal benefit.  In the current system, the
presumably the overall cost and benfit are roughly equal.

	This is sort of like the paradox of the farmers and the field.  A
number of farmers share a field, on which they can graze X sheep.
For every sheep greater than X that grazes on the field, the field
becomes slightly less productive the next year.
	Unfortunately, the marginal cost of a given farmer adding 1 more
sheep, namely a slight deterioration of the field, is much less than
the marginal gain, an extra sheep to sell at market.  So, if each
farmer acts in his self interest, he will continue to add sheep to the
field until the cost of adding one sheep  balances the benefit of an
extra sheep.  By that time, the field will be in ruins.

	The same is true of a pay per message USENET, only inverse.  Since
the marginal cost of one message is greater than the marginal gain,
people will put less and less messages on the net until the costs
balance out.  By that time the net will be a wasteland where only
vitally important messages are sent.

	In both of the above  cases, the solution involves a communal
setup.  The farmers who must share the field must also share the sheep,
thus no farmer makes any marginal gain by adding sheep.

	Like wise, if the cost of USENET is shared equally by all, no
person takes a marginal loss by sending messages.



-- 
Larry Kolodney #8 (Moving up)
(USENET)
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