Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site grkermit.UUCP 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) decvax!genrad!grkermit!larry allegra!linus!genrad!grkermit!larry (ARPA) rms.g.lkk@mit-ai