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[Naturegirl1999]

I remember learning about a place, I wish I remembered the name, that had various crafting guilds. An apprentice would have to craft something much better than their previous works to show their master so they could train apprentices, this was called a masterpiece.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I remember learning about a place, I wish I remembered the name, that had various crafting guilds. An apprentice would have to craft something much better than their previous works to show their master so they could train apprentices, this was called a masterpiece.

Many Medieval/Early Renaissance trade guilds were like this, especially among carpenters or anyone else that was producing work on a similar or smaller scale.

Barter is terribly inefficient, but it does always work as a last resort*.

Artisan society sounds cool, but then it gives rise to guilds.


*

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

BARTER IS ACE YO!

TBH, inefficiency is not a bad thing. The pursuant of efficiency more often results in higher expectations than a reduction in time or effort required. Life isn't efficient, and the more we try to make it that way the worse everyone ends up.

[Naturegirl1999]

Yes, looking back it was a history class, so it probably wasn’t talking about a specific place

[WealthyRadish]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The free digital service thing is another interesting point. You mention this:

Third, if you're using a free service and are annoyed that there are adverts, so you want to ban them, then, hello, welcome to the new improved world where this service just doesn't exist in the first place.

-- and I have to wonder, is that actually a bad thing? Should things like youtube, facebook, etc exist? Hindsight is 20/20, and it's a stretch to say that we should have banned advertisement so that these things never formed, but really, I think things would be better without them.

I think youtube is maybe the best example to consider. The question is really a technical one: is there any compelling reason why we should do all of our video sharing over the internet through a single centralized multinational corporation's monopoly? Do we need their servers to do this? I don't think we do.

If advertisements were banned and the "user-created content platform" model was basically impossible to make profitable, people would still want to share videos over the internet. The incredible usefulness of the internet would have still stimulated increases in bandwidth and networking technology. The difference is that instead of a monopoly or cartel buying up obscene amounts of server space so they can control everything, we'd probably instead have a decentralized system for these "user networks" like youtube, facebook, etc. We would probably have improved peer-to-peer protocols written and improved by academics and non-profits with the sole aim of improving usefulness (with no profit motive required), rather than closed-door research done by Google or whoever to ever expand their control and entrench their userbase which is conditional on their profit from doing so.

Sure, but then nobody could afford their internet providers charge for bandwidth, so you couldn't actually allow streaming on your own personal site. The reality would instead be that some economy-of-scale provider like Youtube would still have all the videos, except it would also charge subscriptions and charge for upload space, meaning that only cashed-up people could upload.

What I think you're missing is that it's not just digital services that grew because advertising was a thing, it's pretty much every single 20th century medium of communication as well. TV is the best analogy. You have the choice of free-to-air TV, supported by advertising, or you have the walled-garden of the cable TV companies, supported by subscriptions. Remove advertising, and traditional broadcast radio for one would be an immediate casualty, because there's no real way to charge subscriptions for broadcast radio. I guess you could argue poor people would be better off if free TV wasn't a thing, but I'd argue otherwise. TV is social literacy for a lot of uneducated people. Without free broadcast TV, then things may be even more backwards than they are now. You really think they'd be reading books if they didn't have TV? Nope. Mostly, they'd be drinking more alcohol, and driving around more looking for foreign-looking types to beat up.

Also, newspapers without advertising would face immediate collapse. To avert that, they'd raise prices a lot, which would drive down circulation numbers, but they'd focus on articles that appeal to a more wealthy select number of readers. You might argue that this collapse in readership would lead to more "small" publications taking off, but it really wouldn't. If they can't afford the New York Times, but want to read the New York Times, they're not going to throw equivalent money at some local socialist zine that's been xeroxed at your local copy shop.

The reality of an advertising ban would mean the collapse of the mediums supported by advertising and a massive shrinking of the number of creatives who can get ahead in the market. This would not lead to somehow boosting the number of progressive voices that get heard: they're generally unprofitable but are supported for the sake of diverse voices. The thing is: the fringe voices will be the first to go in a world of walled gardens and where all content needs to be profitable. The people who'd actually thrive in such a world are right-wing billionaires with deep pockets who are able to print newspapers and upload videos at a loss, but it's paid back because there's a strong editorial bent in all their "articles" that supports whatever they're trying to manipulate the populace to believe.

Sure, you could still stick your stuff up on blogspot, but they'll start charging subscriptions too, and you'll get all of 3 readers for your content. That's why those sorts of writers go work for advertising-supported sites like the Huffington Post writing about social justice issues rather than a personal blog - because they get heard.

I think you misread my example with youtube (though it's a bit of a tangent to the topic of advertising). My point wasn't that society would be better off without video sharing, it was that we could have almost exactly the same thing as youtube without needing a centralized server hosting the content if it were done with peer-to-peer streaming rather than server-based streaming (an effectively zero-cost system given current user bandwidth availability).

There's an interesting torrent client called Tribler that was developed a while back which I think illustrates this (but there are similar efforts for peer-to-peer social networks of other types). They created an expanded bittorrent protocol and client to go with it that has the essential features that youtube provides: video streaming, persistent user channels, searchable content, content filters, and even a recommendation algorithm, entirely peer-to-peer and without a centralized server (except the cheap trackers that don't handle any serious data).

The problem is that it has all the features (the rudiments of them, anyway) but doesn't have any users or content due to youtube currently occupying that natural monopoly (and it being a relatively undeveloped and unknown area of networking). For the same reason that a competing commercial video sharing site has practically zero chance of competing with youtube a decentralized alternative like this will never get off the ground, but if the ad-based social network model was made impossible then an alternative like Tribler would probably take over with very little loss in quality given time and attention.

I say it could be almost the same, because of course there wouldn't be any real way for users who create content to collect the portion of ad revenue they've relatively recently started getting from youtube, but that's really not essential to the service working. A decentralized system like this would also be fully open and transparent without any data mining etc., and the very idea that something like this could exist at near-zero marginal cost indicates that the profit that a site like youtube generates and the costs they incur are a complete dead weight that benefits only the shareholders and not society at large.


I don't think TV is a very good example in favor of ad-driven media. My understanding is that most people today in countries with the infrastructure don't make use of free television over the air, with the cable or satellite subscription model being dominant here in the US. If they couldn't show ads they would make less money, but I think the experimenting that netflix was doing a while back with advertisements is a good example to look at when considering what television without ads would really mean.

If netflix were to decide to start running ads what they're effectively doing is trusting that they can sell an inferior service without losing customers, and keep people paying a subscription for a service that also advertises to them (like the cable TV model as a whole currently does). A very profitable company selling a strictly worse service for the same price is usually only really possible if they possess power over the market that distorts consumer behavior, i.e. they're not worried about competition succeeding at providing the older better service that is already known to be profitable. Cable providers and the TV networks are the in the same boat through their regional monopolies and exclusive content; they can sell an inferior service polluted with obnoxious advertisements and charge people at the same time, because they possess some form of limited monopoly. If the ads were cut, TV wouldn't cease to exist (at the very least the "premium" channels are evidence of that, but it shouldn't be thought of that all content would be forced to be of that type and quality). The crappiest content (which is usually the most saturated with advertisements) would get cut, but any actual loss would mostly eat into the profits of monopoly that are already above what they would be getting in a fair market.

Radio is a tougher one. It is hard to imagine mass radio broadcasting getting off the ground without advertising, but at least today since the technology and infrastructure has been established I'm not sure that it's strictly necessary. I'm currently in a city with only around 150,000 people, and anecdotally there are 3 news/music public radio stations I know of that air zero or very few advertisements (relying on donations instead). Radio wouldn't go away, but I agree that it be hard hit.

With print/article-driven journalism, I think most agree that it's already dying horribly, and I don't think the last-ditch life support system that advertisement currently provides will save it. When I see the NYT as you mentioned, I see a zombie wearing a venerable brand's skin begging me to turn off adblock, not something with much of a future ahead of it or can be expected to maintain an expensive level of quality (real investigative journalism etc) into the future with or without advertisements.

...of course, this whole discussion is hypothetical, since ads will never actually be banned, but I don't think it's correct to say that modern media would disappear without it.

[McTraveller]

Other industries to consider: insurance.

I'm still not sure about this one - at least the modern incarnation of it.  It feels like another prisoner's dilemma: so many people have it, that prices are now set assuming you have insurance, so if you don't have insurance you get penalized.  I'd extend "insurance" to include things like guaranteed loans to, so this would also include things like US secondary education costs. Maybe even funeral costs.

On the flip side, insurance is good about defraying the individual cost of certain events.  I still think, though, that it may increase the total aggregate cost.

[scriver]

Yes, looking back it was a history class, so it probably wasn’t talking about a specific place

No, if it was a history class, it is very likely it was talking about a specific place, and then forcibly extrapolating that place's customs and law to every other place in the vicinity -- see also freudality 101

[Naturegirl1999]

Yes, looking back it was a history class, so it probably wasn’t talking about a specific place

No, if it was a history class, it is very likely it was talking about a specific place, and then forcibly extrapolating that place's customs and law to every other place in the vicinity -- see also freudality 101

I wish I could remember the name of the place it was talking about

[JoshuaFH]

ptw

[Reelya]

Barter is terribly inefficient, but it does always work as a last resort*.

Artisan society sounds cool, but then it gives rise to guilds.

According to a number of articles, no "barter society", as described by Adam Smith and similar as a precursor to money existing has ever been observed among any of the known societies at various levels development. So the whole theory that "barter economy was inefficient, so we invented money" is a kind of economic straw man that was created after the fact.

The rise of money probably had more to do with the rise of governments and taxation than anything else. Money allows you to convert the various forms of goods into a standardized good for taxation purposes, and the fact that the *government accepts money* gives it indirect trading value. So the original value of metal money may not be that different to fiat money. It was valuable because you can pay your taxes with it. Let's face it: gold is kinda nice, but you need some sort of external incentive to explain how people initially agreed to trade something useful / edible for a shiny yellow rock. Note that tribes that don't have a high level of complex development don't generally seem to think gold is anything that special. It's only when you start to get complex government that it gains some meaning.

[McTraveller]

I'd say that the lack of "barter societies" is pretty strong evidence that barter is not efficient enough to scale to whatever would be large enough to constitute a "barter society."

I definitely see the correlation of the "rise of money" with the rise of larger societies which also correlates with the rise of government.  But governments first rose with direct taxation of goods (e.g., 10% of your grain and livestock go to the ruling class), not in money; so I don't think there's any causal impact there.  Money gains meaning not just because of a government - it has meaning because it is fungible and doesn't decay as rapidly as, say, a bag of grain.  I think governments took advantage of this aspect of money, and probably abuse it too, but that's more for the politics threads than the economics threads

[MrRoboto75]

Really most barter societies would be communal villages for the most part.

Some currency started as standardized weights (X amount of gold) that were controlled by strong merchants.  Govs wanted in on that as you can cut down on the actual weight of the coin either by cutting the coin itself or cutting the materials, then by legal tender laws have them still accept it as X.

Inflation via printing more money is basically stealth taxation by having money now but devaluing everyone's money in the future.

[WealthyRadish]

I think what Reelya was referring to is the idea that currency was preceded by credit rather than an immediate exchange of commodities. What both money and barter allow for is exchange without credit, i.e. an immediate transaction between mistrustful parties. That's probably the more important distinction over the relatively minor difference between bartering with goods or currency.

[Reelya]

Bringing the idea of credit into it is probably a good point.

What I was really referring to is the enlightenment-era concept of barter societies as a "stage" that things went through that required the rise of money. It's a fiction.

Apparently, proper barter (as in X cows for Y chickens type of transactions) has only really been observed in societies that already had money, but when either party lacks liquidity (and credit is another way to refer to the same concept). It's a way of allowing trade when both parties lack money, so it boosts commerce. However, note that there's only one element of society that gets annoyed when this happens - the government.

Really most barter societies would be communal villages for the most part.

But we have plenty of examples of these, and they don't barter. They give gifts.

You barter when you don't know and trust the other party. If you try and haggle with your friends and quibble over money, see exactly how long they stay your friends. In communal villages the system is often that there's a storehouse that all the village goods go in, and a group such as the women then dole out what's needed. They don't quibble over "this pile of sticks are mine, those particular chickens are yours, therefore i'll swap X sticks for Y chicken eggs".

The reason they don't barter isn't because "barter is inefficient", it's because at that level keeping track of personal ownership is inefficient. It can be hard to see, since we live in societies pretty much obsessed with personal properly boundaries, but a lot of traditional societies don't work like that. For example, I have indigenous Australian friends and they do get annoyed sometimes that their relatives will come into their houses and just eat food / take stuff. They're not acting like that because they're naturally thieving, they're doing that because in the traditional culture, they don't have the concept of your stuff and my stuff being separate. Your family's stuff is your stuff.

Basically it's like the situation in a share house where everyone buys their own groceries and doesn't share, and gets upset if you use "their butter" or "their eggs" vs the situation where you all buy food together and cook together. In the first situation, you might "barter" if you're short of something and the other person has more, and it's an inefficient system, but the cause of the inefficiency isn't the barter, it's the fact that you're not pooling your money to buy the jumbo-size version of all the shopping items.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Yea, by barter I meant more along the lines of a gift society split into small regional units rather than an actual fully individual barter system. As far as money goes... I mean it's kind of fucked, the concept of credit is all fine and dandy, but relying entirely on a currency creates a lot of room for ways to fuck with people (which we now identify as totally okay, but it really isn't).

[Reelya]

Why are all the private/corporate/libertarian future-city plans so clearly flawed:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/19/inside-lavasa-indian-city-built-private-corporation

“I wouldn’t live here if I wasn’t working here,” she says. “The main reason is there are no schools out here. If I get married and have children, they cannot get settled here in Lavasa.” This highlights one of the major problems for Lavasa – how does it turn itself from a quirky weekend getaway into a fully fledged “smart city” where people live and work full time?

I could take these corporate "city of the future" mega-cities built by billionaires more seriously if they didn't somehow forget to have basic amenities like "schools". The guy's pushing it as a model city to solve the housing issues in India, but he's forgotten to make space for any sort of education system. Dumbass. I'm guessing he thinks "the market" will solve the problem once people realize their kids are turning out dumb as shit due to the lack of schools. Or, more likely, he'll tell you to have your kids commute to some other city where the taxpayer pays for education. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs.

Reminds me of the other privatized city in Indian, Gurgaon. Which doesn't have a sewage system, so you have to live in a private block with it's own sewage pumps, and they pump the poop just far enough so you can't smell it, and dump it there, instead of having a treatment plant.

I'm kinda expecting horrible things if India gets the coronavirus, like 20 million dead.