David P James wrote:
On Sat 22 May 2004 14:07, John L Fjellstad wrote:David P James <dpjames@rogers.com> writes:Now suppose you could demand a payment whenever someone sent you an email. It would only need to be a few pennies in all probability.Not everybody has the same buying power. A few pennies might not be much for someone living in the Western World, but it might mean a meal for someone from Somalia or Vietnam. Should email be limited to those who can afford it?If someone is living such a hand-to-mouth existence it's highly unlikely they'll even have access to the internet.
Incorrect.There are projects in India and Extremadura,Spain for example, that qualify for exactly that definition. Of course, of necessity, it is only open source which caters to *this* market.
For those who are somewhat better off, there are a number of things to consider. Those with whom that person is likely to be communicating via email will be under similar circumstances, so they'll set their fees accordingly (and of course most people would exempt those with whom they communicate regularly anyway). Second, it is probably better to think of this system as one of including a deposit which in all likelihood will be returned (if only because the recipient might have to pay access your inbox to reply). Third, even if you don't get your payment back, email will still be cheaper and more reliable than most of the other options available to you, such as mail and telephone.If you introduce any aspect of the internet as a commodity available for a price, you also introduce the concept of the price rise.
No system is ever going to be completely accessible to the destitute,
So let's make sure they stay where they belong?
The concept of 'The Tragedy of the Commons', was first expounded by a biologist describing reasonably accurately, what happens at, say, the bacterial level, and then adopted as a false universal principle, and applied to the broad spectrum. I believe we have made at least some advance on that level of existence, no matter what the efforts of that social sub-group known as 'economists' may choose to believe and impose on the thought structures, and therefore the existence of others.and I doubt that the current system serves them at all anyway (if anything, if they have access at all, they're likely to find themselves on the same ISP as a spammer and consequently blocked by other ISPs and users using RBLs). The current state of email is another example proving the economic concept known as "The Tragedy of the Commons".
Any valuable 'free' resource (I say 'free' in the sense of free to the user) will be overused, in some cases to the point of exhaustion or depletion.
Rubbish. This is 'The Tragedy of the Commons'. This idea has been disproven any number of times.Economics begins with the concepts of 'rivalrous' and non-rivalrous' resources in the commons. Please elucidate, just for example, how a 'non-rivalrous' resource is overused to the point of depletion or exhaustion. How is an idea depleted in the sharing of it? There will be just as much of this email left over after you have finished reading it, as when you began. No matter that you merely delete it to rid yourself of the inconvenience of the views expounded.
A number of people have already commented in this thread that if things get much worse they'll give up on email altogether. A communication system based on recipient bears the preponderance of costs will always be open to such a problem (iirc, this problem existed with faxes as well).Any economic study, and resultant projected report, propounds to have taken all values into consideration. I have found that to be rarely the case. Very few economic reports take into consideration social, cultural or environmental costs/values. When they finally wake up to the fact that the mere fiscal view does not cater to the full spectrum of social requirement, will be when I begin to think that perhaps economics is maturing as a science, instead of merely adhering to fiscal market requirement. It will also incidentally, assist greatly in the scenario of the destitute. Who pays for the services of economists? Obviously not the destitute.As an economist, I look at the billions of dollars, resources and manhours wasted on dealing with spam and think of all the investments, jobs and other more useful spending and activities that didn't take place because of it.
The same goes with Microsoft's monopoly rent (or tax as some call it) of course, but that's a different problem :)
Wrong again. Same old song. Regards, David.