I think the way it’s embedded in the larger social setting and economy is a pretty good strength.
OSS is a good comparison. I’m curious how OSS handles rivalrous goods? Sharing HPMOR and other stories and songs scales for close-to-free much like most OSS libraries, but I don’t know the OSS community well enough to comment on how scalable services (e.g. AO3, which I’d guess is comparable to the LessWrong site) or attendance at events (e.g. Open Source Summit, vaguely comparable to LessOnline?) work.
Splitting “extractive” for a moment; in some parts, the answer is it’s fine, we don’t care, not that much can be extracted via this angle. There’s only so much damage the one person eating all the chips at the open invite potluck can usually do, and if needed the mechanisms there are more around asking them to stop or disinviting specific people. More extractive behavior does exist but I think usually has other mechanisms providing friction.
I think ‘pass it forward’ and ‘make the world and community I want to live in’ are similar. I usually notice them getting a little distinct when someone’s being specific about one area; to use myself as an example, I entered the IRL community via the East Coast Rationalist Megameetup, and I correspondingly prioritize ECRM higher than other things with that rough shape
Yep. ‘Give good advice to college students and cross subsidize events a bit, plus gentle pressure via norms to be chill about the wealth differences’ is my best current answer. Kinda wish I had a better one.
There just aren’t that many rivalrous goods in OSS—website hosting etc. tends to be covered by large tech companies as a goodwill/marketing/recruiting/supply-chain expense, c.f. the Python Sofware Foundation. Major conferences usually have some kind of scholarship program for students and either routinely pay speakers or cover costs for those who couldn’t attend otherwise; community-organized conferences like PyCon tend to be more generous with those. Honor-system “individual ticket” vs “corporate ticket” prices are pretty common, often with a cheaper student price too.
A key mechanism I think is that lots of people are aware that they have lucrative jobs and/or successful companies because of open source, that being basically the only way to make money off OSS, and therefore are willing to give back either directly or for the brand benefits.
Yep. ‘Give good advice to college students and cross subsidize events a bit, plus gentle pressure via norms to be chill about the wealth differences’ is my best current answer. Kinda wish I had a better one.
Slight, some, if any nudges toward politics being something that gives people a safety net, so that everyone has the same foundation to fall on? So that even if there are wealth differences, there aren’t as much large wealth enabled stresses
“yes obviously there’s a lot of gift-economy around”, some further observations
It’s more embedded in the larger social setting and economy than typically-studied gift economies.
Open-source sofware might be an interesting comparison with both gifts and lots of money around.
You need some mechanism to prevent extractive behavior; typically that’s either ticketing or private invites
‘pass it forward’ often looks similar to ‘making the world and community I want to live in’; both are noble
The incredibly wide range of incomes and wealth is really unusual and nobody really knows what to do with it, alas.
I mostly agree with all of that.
I think the way it’s embedded in the larger social setting and economy is a pretty good strength.
OSS is a good comparison. I’m curious how OSS handles rivalrous goods? Sharing HPMOR and other stories and songs scales for close-to-free much like most OSS libraries, but I don’t know the OSS community well enough to comment on how scalable services (e.g. AO3, which I’d guess is comparable to the LessWrong site) or attendance at events (e.g. Open Source Summit, vaguely comparable to LessOnline?) work.
Splitting “extractive” for a moment; in some parts, the answer is it’s fine, we don’t care, not that much can be extracted via this angle. There’s only so much damage the one person eating all the chips at the open invite potluck can usually do, and if needed the mechanisms there are more around asking them to stop or disinviting specific people. More extractive behavior does exist but I think usually has other mechanisms providing friction.
I think ‘pass it forward’ and ‘make the world and community I want to live in’ are similar. I usually notice them getting a little distinct when someone’s being specific about one area; to use myself as an example, I entered the IRL community via the East Coast Rationalist Megameetup, and I correspondingly prioritize ECRM higher than other things with that rough shape
Yep. ‘Give good advice to college students and cross subsidize events a bit, plus gentle pressure via norms to be chill about the wealth differences’ is my best current answer. Kinda wish I had a better one.
There just aren’t that many rivalrous goods in OSS—website hosting etc. tends to be covered by large tech companies as a goodwill/marketing/recruiting/supply-chain expense, c.f. the Python Sofware Foundation. Major conferences usually have some kind of scholarship program for students and either routinely pay speakers or cover costs for those who couldn’t attend otherwise; community-organized conferences like PyCon tend to be more generous with those. Honor-system “individual ticket” vs “corporate ticket” prices are pretty common, often with a cheaper student price too.
A key mechanism I think is that lots of people are aware that they have lucrative jobs and/or successful companies because of open source, that being basically the only way to make money off OSS, and therefore are willing to give back either directly or for the brand benefits.
Slight, some, if any nudges toward politics being something that gives people a safety net, so that everyone has the same foundation to fall on? So that even if there are wealth differences, there aren’t as much large wealth enabled stresses