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Link Roundup: Timesink Edition
Nothing new and exciting is happening this Wednesday at goldengod central. Looks like I could only stand to be interesting for two weeks in a row. This week I’ve found a lot of interesting stuff online. I think I have enough links to write next week’s roundup already.
Here are this week’s articles, specifically formulated to suck up all your free time:
- Searchable index of 5,000+ vintage LA news photos - Boing Boing finds the best stuff. I’ve already lost a couple hours to poking around this thing. The couple dozen shots that BB picked out as interesting are worth looking at, just be careful not to get sucked in.
- Photography Related Top 5 Lists - Brian Auer of Epic Edits puts together a decent list of ‘Top 5′ lists relating to photography from Darren Rowse’s recent contest. This is at the top of my to-read stack.
- Gerd George: My Models - A clever bit of advertising for a photographer with a unique approach to selecting models.
- The Blind Photographer - A haunting gallery of photos taken by the blind as part of a year-long project. This is immensely interesting to look at.
- Dan Heller on The Photographer’s Dilemma - Dan Heller uses the frame of the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma to elaborate on the state of current microstock photography sites. He focuses on smugmug and their upcoming entry into the field. Longer read for a blog post, but totally worth it.
Now, to read those top 5 lists…
Kurrs Said,
May 17, 2007 @ 8:17 am
Dan Heller’s post actually caused me physical pain.
“First Commandment of the laws of economics”??????
WTF???? I wasn’t aware that his ass was the source of economic thought.
“In other words, never set up a business model that depends on the cooperation of those who are inherently competing with one another.”
And that can’t communicate, and that the game is zero-sum, and, and, and…
Why doesn’t society collapse? Maybe because we’re allowed to collude you fucking dumbwit. Even if society could be characterised by a zero-sum, the fact that we’re allowed to sit down and chat fundamentally makes PD not apply. The way he writes his explanation is so fucking Hobbesian I could puke. Leviathan arguments piss me off.
And the voting problem is totally bollucks. I mean, sure, let’s say that it’s in the people’s incentives to screw over others to make their photos look better. But the problem there is that if it is in their incentive, it is in everyone’s incentive. So, everyone’s ratings just pushed down equally. Plus, this isn’t taking into account users who aren’t gunning for their photos, either because they don’t sell or they don’t care. PLUS, it’s not taking into account that sometimes, even though - apparently - these people are actively running around voting 0s and 1s all the time, occasionally, they would slip and be like “hey, that’s a cool photo” and vote it highly. It’s also more likely that this kind of “slippage” would occur on really awesome photos more often than shitty ones. Woo, suddenly the power of aggregation kicks in and we’ve got a rating range! It might only be between 0 and 3 on a 10 point scale, but at that point 3 becomes the new 10. The system has exactly the same effect as before.
And in regards to pricing, this same “dreaded prisoner’s dilemma” is the same thing that ends up giving you economic efficiency. Y’see, in a large competitive market where you’re allowed to set your own prices, the price just gets pushed down to where marginal price equals marginal gain. Society buys the last unit that the market is willing to supply. Not one more, or one less. However, if they had the ability to collude and operate oligopolistically (such as OPEC, etc), they could set a price that maximises for them but not the consumers (not as ideal as restricting quantity, but price setting is better than nothing). From the perspective of an overhead company (such as smugmug), more commerce is better than less commerce with one side “winning”. Letting users set their own prices, and having enough users to make collusion impossible means smugmug wins. The photographers would get less, but really, they would be getting more by being dicks anyhow, so tough cookies.
(( This is of course, unless there is some market imperfection in the way photography itself operates. I haven’t crunched that one yet in my head. In that case, intervention would be required. I’m not sure why it would, in this case, but it would, if there is a defect in the market. ))
ARG, I hate it when people who aren’t economists pretend they are. It wounds me.
I mean, sure, he’s right. Any business venture that depends on people cooperating when it is in their personal incentive not to is retarded. However, he spends next to no time explaining how this is the case, and instead tosses around buzz words and expects everyone to be like “Yeah, human nature, Prisoner’s Dilemma, zero-sum, we should regulate, yeah”. If he spent more time making his case, I might agree.
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