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Assuming the same sized customer pool, who will earn more money-- the
artist whose work gets downloaded freely and 10% of whose customers pay
the voluntary shareware fee-- or the artist who is represented by a
record label/publisher that forces 100% of the customers to pay up, but
keep 90% of the take?
Also... I happen to work with computers. But even if I didn't, I'd
still be fiddling around with them for fun. The truly cool stuff I've
done was not for pay. It was because it needed to be done. Or because I
was curious to see if I could do it. Once an individual has scrambled
above the necessity rungs of the Maslovian ladder, then fascination,
perfectionism, curiousity, respect of peer group, acquisition of
power... these things become forces on par with financial reward.
After all, money is important only insofar as it is a means to an end,
and if you can short-circuit the process and get at the end itself, who
needs money? If I can energize transhumanism, and transhumanism can
energize society as a whole, and as part of a general renaissance
someone comes up with a reliable way of reviving cryonauts or reversing
the aging process... that's exactly what I would have paid my surplus
money to do anyway, if there was a mechanism in place to accept my donation
and channel it to these causes.
- --
IRS Davidian Special Forces
Why are the above words in my signature? Check out:
http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:19 MDT