Digging up a little deeper on the issue I think I have already figured out a lot of the details that the Collaborative Commons direction seems to be heading into.
I have been trying to label my thinking as “contributionism”.
Traditionally you have, fixed costs + unit costs = costs paid by consumers + leftovers claimable by the corporation (= profit). Usually the fixed costs are what they are and the amount that is produced is varied. Additionally we offer the product at some price. This gives it the form of, cost_f + Xcost_u=c_cost_uX+profit. Homo economicus selects the product with cheapest price so there is pressure to set c_cost_u as low as possible but we want to have profit as high as possible. Dividing by X we get cost_f/X=c_cost_u+profit/X. If the company is really efficent they can set their profit slightly less of the 0 profit c_cost_u price of the next best competetitor (in reality they won’t accept a 0 profit but then you use a figure of the lowest profit they accept instead of not bothering to make the product). Traditional analysis rather wants to see it in terms of marignal cost where you don’t see the profit so much as ebing part of every product but instead you first make the product some amount to offset the fixed costs and then you are free to make addiotional units purely to make excess money. However this method is pretty tricky if you don’t know how many units will be sold if the value of X is unknown. In practice you have to aim for a price / scale point. If you get the price low you eat into your money per itemt ath you won’t make your invesment back. If you set it too high people either don’t afford it or it gets outcompeted by cheaper products. So there is sweepspot range where the “price is right” that it accumulates more money than it loses to competition / being expensive. If you hit anywhere in there you get a profit and if you hit a better spot you get more money. However while you can make an educated guess it ends up being a guess neve the less. I am using suggestive phrasing that it need not be so.
We can do the optimatization differently. We know the fixed costs are going to be cost_f and we would like to make 1000 from the operation so profit=1000. cost_f + Xcost_u=c_cost_uX+profit → X(cost_u)-X(c_cost_u)=profit-cost_f → X*(cost_u-c_cost_u)=profit-cost_f → cost_u-c_cost_u=(profit-cost_f)/X → c_cost_u=((profit-cost_f)/X)-cost_u. Now we have only one unknown on the left and one unknown on the right. This is also the price point of making exactly the profit that we want. Instead of fixing the ask price we have fixed the profit. Now we start offering these and when new customers arrive we retroactively change the price of already sold products (It always goes down so they probably don’t mind). Now we are perfectly competetive while getting the profit that we want regardless of volume. It’s impossible for us to price wrong.
This kind of alternate scheme makes more sense for which cost_u is low. However there are plenty of areas where cost_u is effectively zero. Once a game has been programmed installing it on 1 billion computers has virtually 0 cost. Also once a songs has been composed downlaoding it to an addiotional ipod is practically free. I call this ability “copyability”. They tend to be characterised as those with low cost_u but high cost_f but in general there is a degree into it. For example if you make chairs you still need additional wood so additional chairs is not free. but then you don’t need to redesign the chair. If you make designer chair a bigger portion of your product is actually inthe design rather then in the raw materials. Also if you make 1 medicine pill it isn’t completely free to make another but the essential effort was to get it tested as safe so the second costs about 1/100000000th what the first costed. In fact it doesn’t really make sense to apply the concept of marginal cost here. You are never really limited by raw material cost when making medicines.
However this has all sort of edgy theorethical heterodoxy going for it. For example you no longer become a billionare if you make a product that has sell volume way more than you thought was economical for. Bug or feature? You have to say good buy to winning the marketing super lottery. But in exchange the legitimacy of hit products is better and the price representing the effort to get the thing done is better. You also have a big disperancy with ability to pay and actual amount paid. Even if you already paid 100$ for a product you migth end up getting 30$ later back. If we use the old rules of evaluation of everything being worth what the consumer is willing to pay for it you got 100$ of value for 70$ paid. Also hit products have lower price than those that barely make economic sense. Usually when you want good shoes you pay more to get more. However similar products one being selected as being the one worth using and getting it goes down in price making it a good rule of thumb of getting the cheapest applicaple product to get the best quality.
There is also the property that all customers pay the same price. No more getting stuff cheap from the sale bin. There is no price guessing so there is no arbitrary drops. Instead of being smacked with a first user “fine” of being a first adopter when your product “normalises” you actually have paid just as much as those that dollar bin buy their stuff. You just got your earlier by having the chance that it will stay a niche product forever (and never hits the masses). But if you were ok witht he price point of the product when you got it there isn’t any gambling from your point going on. In fact we can precollect commitments on how many people would buy it from the dollar bins to jump straight to mass sales without going throught first adopter phase. That is what would have been a tragic overpricing can be can be salvaged to a working price point as people don’t have an incentive to underreport what they woudl be willing to pay for a product. That is if you overreporting doesn’t cost nearly as much where each cent that you overreport is a loss for you in the traditional haggling scheme. In fact we might first have a idea of thing that might be worth doign and then have the financial commitments from end users before production even begins. That is we have an alternative economical activity motivator framework. You can have a project setup and financed for the sake of having it done. For example how many “I will chip in 30$ to have man go to Mars” we need to get our rockets together? 50%6 billion30$ = 90 billion budjet. Will that get us there? Does it make economical sense? Notice how we can have commitment levels under and over 30$. Notice how we don’t need to make anyone a multimillionare to get it organised. That is the budjet can compromise just many regular level people working on it with down to earth “just let me support myself” money demands. How we currently do speculation is that we let a enterprise take a loan and then either let it bankcrypt spectacularly or hit upon on a permit to print money. Notice how both of these options are a drain on society.
The thing is that the alternatives never really want to get spesific. Yeah it would be nice that those who do work would have the right to organise work how they see it would work best since those probably know best. But if you don’t provide any microdetails on how it is supposed to work it becomes an empty slogan. That is a suit with deskjob holding and maanging the ownership is pretty far from the ideal but if we dont’ have a concrete way fo imagining what to have in its stead it doesn’t help to tear anything up and leave just a vacuum. If employers with no desk jobs would select among themselfs one that did start a desk job identical to the current suit would that be significant enough? That is the curretn system is good in that sense that there is clear appointed persons that are financially responcible. Althoguth we could argue that in a system where goverment goes on to cover up the losses when it comes time to live with the responcibility it creates a position of power without any accountability. But it kinda means that if we no longer have “big players” that assume enourmous repsonciblities in hoeps of getting ennourmeous greeds filled we need to have a method how we make the group of people that shoulder the responcibility larger. We could argue that in the current state the responcibility of the consumer is artifically limited. That is if you buy a product that is produced by firm that goes bankcrupt you have gained a product as if it made financial sense when it in fact didn’t. That is when you are at the super market the products that will flop are pretty comparable in price to the products that won’t. The process of eliminating the investor greed motive migth mean that the economical reality is more directly exposed to the customer. Curretnly we have set prices that have an element of false promise. You can buy a product as if it made financial sense even if it ends up not doing so. There migth be a need to have a speculative elemtn on the prices. Would it be okay if to have a little higher nominal prices on shelfs but then have the ones that make economical sense go down? Would it be okay that if you could not just arrive into a “set table” of having already produced products waiting on the shelf ready to buy you would actually have to keep money preattached to upkeep the selection? Could it be okay if you needed to select which kinds of products you will buy 3 months in advance instead of 1 day in advance? Would you rather pay 100$ now for sneakers or make the decision to attach 70$ to it now and know that it makes economical sense 3 weeks later (or know that it won’t and rereceive that 70$)?
Digging up a little deeper on the issue I think I have already figured out a lot of the details that the Collaborative Commons direction seems to be heading into.
I have been trying to label my thinking as “contributionism”.
Traditionally you have, fixed costs + unit costs = costs paid by consumers + leftovers claimable by the corporation (= profit). Usually the fixed costs are what they are and the amount that is produced is varied. Additionally we offer the product at some price. This gives it the form of, cost_f + Xcost_u=c_cost_uX+profit. Homo economicus selects the product with cheapest price so there is pressure to set c_cost_u as low as possible but we want to have profit as high as possible. Dividing by X we get cost_f/X=c_cost_u+profit/X. If the company is really efficent they can set their profit slightly less of the 0 profit c_cost_u price of the next best competetitor (in reality they won’t accept a 0 profit but then you use a figure of the lowest profit they accept instead of not bothering to make the product). Traditional analysis rather wants to see it in terms of marignal cost where you don’t see the profit so much as ebing part of every product but instead you first make the product some amount to offset the fixed costs and then you are free to make addiotional units purely to make excess money. However this method is pretty tricky if you don’t know how many units will be sold if the value of X is unknown. In practice you have to aim for a price / scale point. If you get the price low you eat into your money per itemt ath you won’t make your invesment back. If you set it too high people either don’t afford it or it gets outcompeted by cheaper products. So there is sweepspot range where the “price is right” that it accumulates more money than it loses to competition / being expensive. If you hit anywhere in there you get a profit and if you hit a better spot you get more money. However while you can make an educated guess it ends up being a guess neve the less. I am using suggestive phrasing that it need not be so.
We can do the optimatization differently. We know the fixed costs are going to be cost_f and we would like to make 1000 from the operation so profit=1000. cost_f + Xcost_u=c_cost_uX+profit → X(cost_u)-X(c_cost_u)=profit-cost_f → X*(cost_u-c_cost_u)=profit-cost_f → cost_u-c_cost_u=(profit-cost_f)/X → c_cost_u=((profit-cost_f)/X)-cost_u. Now we have only one unknown on the left and one unknown on the right. This is also the price point of making exactly the profit that we want. Instead of fixing the ask price we have fixed the profit. Now we start offering these and when new customers arrive we retroactively change the price of already sold products (It always goes down so they probably don’t mind). Now we are perfectly competetive while getting the profit that we want regardless of volume. It’s impossible for us to price wrong.
This kind of alternate scheme makes more sense for which cost_u is low. However there are plenty of areas where cost_u is effectively zero. Once a game has been programmed installing it on 1 billion computers has virtually 0 cost. Also once a songs has been composed downlaoding it to an addiotional ipod is practically free. I call this ability “copyability”. They tend to be characterised as those with low cost_u but high cost_f but in general there is a degree into it. For example if you make chairs you still need additional wood so additional chairs is not free. but then you don’t need to redesign the chair. If you make designer chair a bigger portion of your product is actually inthe design rather then in the raw materials. Also if you make 1 medicine pill it isn’t completely free to make another but the essential effort was to get it tested as safe so the second costs about 1/100000000th what the first costed. In fact it doesn’t really make sense to apply the concept of marginal cost here. You are never really limited by raw material cost when making medicines.
However this has all sort of edgy theorethical heterodoxy going for it. For example you no longer become a billionare if you make a product that has sell volume way more than you thought was economical for. Bug or feature? You have to say good buy to winning the marketing super lottery. But in exchange the legitimacy of hit products is better and the price representing the effort to get the thing done is better. You also have a big disperancy with ability to pay and actual amount paid. Even if you already paid 100$ for a product you migth end up getting 30$ later back. If we use the old rules of evaluation of everything being worth what the consumer is willing to pay for it you got 100$ of value for 70$ paid. Also hit products have lower price than those that barely make economic sense. Usually when you want good shoes you pay more to get more. However similar products one being selected as being the one worth using and getting it goes down in price making it a good rule of thumb of getting the cheapest applicaple product to get the best quality.
There is also the property that all customers pay the same price. No more getting stuff cheap from the sale bin. There is no price guessing so there is no arbitrary drops. Instead of being smacked with a first user “fine” of being a first adopter when your product “normalises” you actually have paid just as much as those that dollar bin buy their stuff. You just got your earlier by having the chance that it will stay a niche product forever (and never hits the masses). But if you were ok witht he price point of the product when you got it there isn’t any gambling from your point going on. In fact we can precollect commitments on how many people would buy it from the dollar bins to jump straight to mass sales without going throught first adopter phase. That is what would have been a tragic overpricing can be can be salvaged to a working price point as people don’t have an incentive to underreport what they woudl be willing to pay for a product. That is if you overreporting doesn’t cost nearly as much where each cent that you overreport is a loss for you in the traditional haggling scheme. In fact we might first have a idea of thing that might be worth doign and then have the financial commitments from end users before production even begins. That is we have an alternative economical activity motivator framework. You can have a project setup and financed for the sake of having it done. For example how many “I will chip in 30$ to have man go to Mars” we need to get our rockets together? 50%6 billion30$ = 90 billion budjet. Will that get us there? Does it make economical sense? Notice how we can have commitment levels under and over 30$. Notice how we don’t need to make anyone a multimillionare to get it organised. That is the budjet can compromise just many regular level people working on it with down to earth “just let me support myself” money demands. How we currently do speculation is that we let a enterprise take a loan and then either let it bankcrypt spectacularly or hit upon on a permit to print money. Notice how both of these options are a drain on society.
The thing is that the alternatives never really want to get spesific. Yeah it would be nice that those who do work would have the right to organise work how they see it would work best since those probably know best. But if you don’t provide any microdetails on how it is supposed to work it becomes an empty slogan. That is a suit with deskjob holding and maanging the ownership is pretty far from the ideal but if we dont’ have a concrete way fo imagining what to have in its stead it doesn’t help to tear anything up and leave just a vacuum. If employers with no desk jobs would select among themselfs one that did start a desk job identical to the current suit would that be significant enough? That is the curretn system is good in that sense that there is clear appointed persons that are financially responcible. Althoguth we could argue that in a system where goverment goes on to cover up the losses when it comes time to live with the responcibility it creates a position of power without any accountability. But it kinda means that if we no longer have “big players” that assume enourmous repsonciblities in hoeps of getting ennourmeous greeds filled we need to have a method how we make the group of people that shoulder the responcibility larger. We could argue that in the current state the responcibility of the consumer is artifically limited. That is if you buy a product that is produced by firm that goes bankcrupt you have gained a product as if it made financial sense when it in fact didn’t. That is when you are at the super market the products that will flop are pretty comparable in price to the products that won’t. The process of eliminating the investor greed motive migth mean that the economical reality is more directly exposed to the customer. Curretnly we have set prices that have an element of false promise. You can buy a product as if it made financial sense even if it ends up not doing so. There migth be a need to have a speculative elemtn on the prices. Would it be okay if to have a little higher nominal prices on shelfs but then have the ones that make economical sense go down? Would it be okay that if you could not just arrive into a “set table” of having already produced products waiting on the shelf ready to buy you would actually have to keep money preattached to upkeep the selection? Could it be okay if you needed to select which kinds of products you will buy 3 months in advance instead of 1 day in advance? Would you rather pay 100$ now for sneakers or make the decision to attach 70$ to it now and know that it makes economical sense 3 weeks later (or know that it won’t and rereceive that 70$)?