"The workings of this system of trade stem from the same motivation of "fun" present when Colin Needham developed the Internet Movies Database - which, built upon newsgroup discussions, is half-dynamic. It is Needham's need to "put back" into the Net after having "taken out" so much that drives most trade in dynamic resources. It is the cooking-pot market of a seemingly altruistic value-in-giving norm that drives the economy of interacting people.

If it occured in brickspace, my cooking-pot model would require fairly altruistic participants. A real tribal communal cooking-pot works on a pretty different model, of barter and division of labour (I provide the chicken, you the goat, she the berries, together we share the spiced stew). In our hypothetical tribe, however, people give what they have into the pot with no guarantee that they're getting a fair exchange, which smacks of altruism.

But on the Net, a cooking-pot market is far from altruistic, or it wouldn't work. This is thanks to the major cause for the erosion of value on the Internet - the problem of infinity [21]. Because it takes as much effort to distribute one copy of an original creation as a million - and because the costs are distributed across millions of people - you never lose from letting your product free in the cooking-pot, as long as you are compensated for its creation. You are not giving away something for nothing. You are giving away a million copies of something, for at least one copy of at least one other thing. Since those millions cost you nothing you lose nothing. Nor need there be a notional loss of potential earnings, because those million copies are not inherently valuable - the very fact of them being a million, and theoretically a billion or more - makes them worthless. Your effort is limited to creating one - the original - copy of your product. You are happy to receive something of value in exchange for that one creation."

Response:

The concept of altruism as it is used in the quote above is too narrow. What the author believes is not a prerequisite of participation in the cooking-pot is better described as "economic altruism," where economic loss "from letting your product free in the cooking-pot" does not inhibit the creator. Even if the creator/participant receives some alternative form of value, thus getting rid of the "altruism" requirement, there are a variety of other self-serving motivations that might inhibit a participant from letting his creation go free and multiply in the pot. Some people are inherently protective of their creations for a variety of reasons that to some may appear irrational. To overcome such a variety of "irrational" or narcissistic barriers would require altruism at much higher levels of social and emotional sophistication, far beyond the economic altruism that the author describes. Reputation, or "fun," as the author mentions, might not ever enter one's mental calculus.

-- JonathanBoyer - 24 Sep 2009