Re: Value

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote in message
 news:lomv429pb8r9l2bvou0k2gtru2cg6tm5v1@
4ax.com...
> 
[...]
>
> I got my value from it when I read it.   When I sold it, someone else
> got his value without cutting down any forests.   And I still have the
> value of having read it.

When you bought the book, you were paying for materials (paper and ink)
and services (the act of arranging the paper and ink into something which
can convey useful information by the writer, the store of keeping the copy
pristine, shiny and new, and delivering it from the writer to a location
nearer to you so that you could gain access to it).

As you read the book, you spend the resource of time, and exchange gain
knowledge.

When you sell the book, you're selling materials (paper and ink) and the
service of delivering the book to the next person from the bookstore, who in
turn got it from the author (with perhaps other middlemen along the way).
The person pays you slightly less because you didn't keep it in pristine
state like the store did, so some of the pages may be a bit wrinkled or
folded.

Now they have the book too, but if they actually want knowledge, and not
just a thick cup holder, they'll have to spend the resource of time to read
it as well.

>
> Are you saying that a recycled book has less value than a new book
> because it didn't take as much of the sun's energy in creating the
> paper a second time?

I think it actually takes more energy to recycle a book than to cut down
new trees and make books from them. That's why recycle paper is more
expensive than non-recycled paper (unless the government subsidizes some of
the cost of recycling paper).

>
> How about finding an already-written object in your object library and
> using it in your new program.    Since it didn't cost much new, it
> must not be worth much - right?

With digital information, there's almost no materials involved, so what
you're exchanging is always services. You spent some time writing the
object, and now you're using that object that you wrote. If you share it on
the Internet, other people can use that object too. The "value" of that
object can be said to be equal to the amount of time it took you to create
it. However, as I've mentioned elsewhere, it seems like we can "generate"
time (or man-hours) out of nothing by simply having lots of children; of
course, the more children you have, the more resources they consume to stay
alive, and the more effort (i.e. services) you have to expend in raising
them, which is why I mentioned earlier that I'm not sure we have a zero-sum
game once services enters into the pictures. The equations simply get too
complex for me at that point.

- Oliver