[Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Anthony]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/5/5 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> > I think economics does apply here because we are specifically asking an
> > economic question - how best to allocate our present resources (should
> the
> > WMF buy a server, or etch stuff on nickel plates).  And I don't think
> values
> > have to be monetary in order to apply economic principles to them.  You
> can
> > have a pure barter system and still have economics.
>
> Perhaps, but I'm still not entirely convinced. It may be an economic
> question, but that doesn't mean our theories of economics can answer
> it.
>

Depends on whose theories of economics you're referring to.

Anyway, what can answer it, it being the question "if we've got $5000 what
should we spend it on"?  Anything?

> However, I think you ask a good question when you ask how to assign a
> value
> > to future historical knowledge.  I think the only rational answer is that
> > the value of future historical knowledge is the value to those who are
> > presently alive.  That doesn't mean that the value to those who are not
> yet
> > born is irrelevant, but that it is only relevant to the extent that it
> can
> > be translated into value for those who are alive.  I value future
> historical
> > knowledge to the extent I value giving that knowledge to my children, or
> to
> > the extent I value giving my children the value of giving it to their
> > children, etc.
> >
> > But I guess from your position on this that you would disagree with that.
> > So I'd ask you, how do *you* value future historical knowledge?
>
> I think now we're into the realms of philosophy, rather than
> economics...


Perhaps, but that's because you have to answer certain questions of
philosophy before you can answer questions of economics.


> It is a difficult question. There is a fairly well known
> (I believe) question in ethics about whether a certain impact on a
> specific known person is the same as that impact on an abstract
> unknown person.


I've seen similar versions of that question.


> It comes up when trying to answer questions like: Is
> it right to kill one person in order to make a drug that will,
> somewhere down the line, save thousands of lives?


But I don't think that's a good example of it.


> Most people would, I
> believe, answer "no", which means they put more value on the life of a
> specific person than a hypothetical person (I think I'm one of those
> people, although I can't justify it rationally...).


You didn't phrase it as a specific person, though.  Doesn't it depend on who
that person is?  If the question is: "is it right to kill Saddam Hussein in
order to save thousands of lives", that's going to get a lot more "yes"
answers, isn't it?

Anyway, in this case we're not talking in this case about killing anyone.  I
see how you could try to adapt the question to fit this situation, but I'm
not sure you could properly do it, because in either situation (buy the
server, or etch stuff on nickel), the beneficiaries are anonymous.  That
said, since the beneficiaries in the latter case for the most part aren't
even alive, I think the choice is clear.

>> Or any kind of knowledge? In economics things have value
> >> due to scarcity,
> >
> >
> > No, things have value due to marginal utility.
>
> If value was determined by utility, water would be far more expensive
> that diamonds. You say "marginal utility" rather than just "utility",
> but I don't pay a different amount for my first glass of water each
> day than my second, even though the first is far more useful to me.


Well, where I live we do pay more for water after a certain number of
gallons per month, but the reason you generally don't pay more for your
second glass of water than your first is simply that it is infeasible for a
free market to engage in such price discrimination (that, and the fact that
price discrimination is illegal and the market for water is highly regulated
by the government, anyway).  Price is related to value, but it is not the
same as value.

But I'm sure you've heard of the water-diamond paradox (since you've
attempted above to describe it), and I assume you know that certain schools
of economics have written extensively on this, and how it is not a paradox
under the marginal utility theory of value.

>> knowledge is freely reproducible, so the concept of
> >> scarcity doesn't really apply - either it exists, or it doesn't.
> >> Access to knowledge may have monetary value, but the existence of the
> >> knowledge doesn't, the concept just doesn't apply.
> >
> >
> > If that were true, then why would anyone ever pay someone to create
> > something?  Surely the existence of knowledge can have value, and I don't
> > even think I'm in the minority in that belief.
>
> It clearly has value (otherwise there would be no such thing as
> academia), but I don't think it has a well defined monetary value.


How not?  There's a certain price you'd be willing to pay for education,
isn't there?  It doesn't have an *intrinsic* monetary value, if that's what
you mean, but I'd argue that nothing has *intrinsic* value of any sort.
Value means value to a particular person.