There is a lot of OSS that I use but wouldn’t pay for if it costed money… if it wasn’t free I would just use underscore instead… you get value from something but wouldn’t pay for it because there happen to be similarly valuable products available for free.
Imagine if the other OSS package(s) you’d use instead also didn’t exist. How much would you pay for one of them to exist or be available to you? Maybe not very much, but whatever amount that is, is a benefit you have from the item(s) existing, and that benefit is part of “wealth” the way he is using the term.
But then you get into the facts that there are some things people wouldn’t spend any money on even though it makes them happy and vice versa. I see three different possibilities:
This theoretical willingness to spend money on something that you’re describing is what makes it count as wealth.
The theoretical willingness to spend money is just a proxy for wanting, and it’s the wanting of a thing that makes it wealth.
Wanting isn’t actually wealth. Think: doomscrolling on Facebook. Liking is what matters.
I think humans are complex, and don’t have coherent desires. At the same time, most things people want they enjoy. More enjoyment and liking things is from more wealth.
The fact that we’ve invented weird corner cases by optimizing too hard on engagement (facebook), or on taste (empty calories), doesn’t change the fact that there are lots of things we like and benefit from.
Imagine if the other OSS package(s) you’d use instead also didn’t exist. How much would you pay for one of them to exist or be available to you? Maybe not very much, but whatever amount that is, is a benefit you have from the item(s) existing, and that benefit is part of “wealth” the way he is using the term.
Ok yeah, I get that sense as well.
But then you get into the facts that there are some things people wouldn’t spend any money on even though it makes them happy and vice versa. I see three different possibilities:
This theoretical willingness to spend money on something that you’re describing is what makes it count as wealth.
The theoretical willingness to spend money is just a proxy for wanting, and it’s the wanting of a thing that makes it wealth.
Wanting isn’t actually wealth. Think: doomscrolling on Facebook. Liking is what matters.
I think humans are complex, and don’t have coherent desires. At the same time, most things people want they enjoy. More enjoyment and liking things is from more wealth.
The fact that we’ve invented weird corner cases by optimizing too hard on engagement (facebook), or on taste (empty calories), doesn’t change the fact that there are lots of things we like and benefit from.