Cowen argues that studies on what people are wiling to pay for the internet (if they had to) show that it can’t be helping that much. It’s true that the overall effect is hard to measure though.
I’ve seen those studies and his discussion of them. They all show that people would have to be paid a lot to stop using the internet (and they’d still be benefiting from its side effects), and they’d pay a lot if that were the only option. That indicates a huge consumer surplus, since you don’t have to pay a lot for a base level of internet access.
Cowen’s only response to any of that is to look at measures that gauge the marginal value of the last unit of internet usage (which of course nets out to zero) is low, when we really care about the consumer surplus it generates, which is completely different from (and reflected in different measures than) marginal value.
I’ve seen those studies and his discussion of them. They all show that people would have to be paid a lot to stop using the internet (and they’d still be benefiting from its side effects), and they’d pay a lot if that were the only option. That indicates a huge consumer surplus, since you don’t have to pay a lot for a base level of internet access.
Do these studies take into account the collective action problem? It’s clearly extremely costly to forsake the internet now that everyone expects you to use it, both privately and professionally, so that it would render you an antisocial weirdo and likely unemployable. I certainly wouldn’t accept it for anything less than a fortune, but on the other hand, I could definitely see some serious upsides if the state of communication technology were magically reverted twenty years back—so much that I would have to think carefully about the answer if I were given this offer by some supernatural force.
Also, of course, preferences that are stated rather than revealed should always be taken with extreme skepticism, since they’re likely to be heavy on signaling.
Yes, this is the point Robin Hanson made in a blog post on the matter. Still, one can reasonably expect that the results would be unchanged if you permitted e.g. direct communication with friends through the internet but prohibited informational lookups. That would not entail taking on weirdness, and yet people would still have to be paid a lot for it.
Still, one can reasonably expect that the results would be unchanged if you permitted e.g. direct communication with friends through the internet but prohibited informational lookups. That would not entail taking on weirdness, and yet people would still have to be paid a lot for it.
I’d say it would still entail weirdness, unless the exemption is made broad enough to cover anything that would risk weirdness or unemployability—however then we’re back to something resembling the regular internet usage of people who aren’t in the habit of wasting time on the web.
Cowen argues that studies on what people are wiling to pay for the internet (if they had to) show that it can’t be helping that much. It’s true that the overall effect is hard to measure though.
I’ve seen those studies and his discussion of them. They all show that people would have to be paid a lot to stop using the internet (and they’d still be benefiting from its side effects), and they’d pay a lot if that were the only option. That indicates a huge consumer surplus, since you don’t have to pay a lot for a base level of internet access.
Cowen’s only response to any of that is to look at measures that gauge the marginal value of the last unit of internet usage (which of course nets out to zero) is low, when we really care about the consumer surplus it generates, which is completely different from (and reflected in different measures than) marginal value.
Do these studies take into account the collective action problem? It’s clearly extremely costly to forsake the internet now that everyone expects you to use it, both privately and professionally, so that it would render you an antisocial weirdo and likely unemployable. I certainly wouldn’t accept it for anything less than a fortune, but on the other hand, I could definitely see some serious upsides if the state of communication technology were magically reverted twenty years back—so much that I would have to think carefully about the answer if I were given this offer by some supernatural force.
Also, of course, preferences that are stated rather than revealed should always be taken with extreme skepticism, since they’re likely to be heavy on signaling.
Yes, this is the point Robin Hanson made in a blog post on the matter. Still, one can reasonably expect that the results would be unchanged if you permitted e.g. direct communication with friends through the internet but prohibited informational lookups. That would not entail taking on weirdness, and yet people would still have to be paid a lot for it.
I’d say it would still entail weirdness, unless the exemption is made broad enough to cover anything that would risk weirdness or unemployability—however then we’re back to something resembling the regular internet usage of people who aren’t in the habit of wasting time on the web.
… which only reinforces the point that the study doesn’t fully measure how much it’s changed our lives for the better, doesn’t it?