MediaBerkman

Radio Berkman 139: My Fair Economy

December 10th, 2009

Is it hard to imagine a world in which people are treated fairly? Paid a fair wage for the work they contribute? Rewarded monetarily for the successful intellectual products that they help to produce?

Did you just scoff? If so you might be a knowledge worker who toils day in and day out on information goods – products like software, vaccines, or media – just to see the company you work for take the copyright or patent and reap all the rewards from your innovation.

A new working paper from researchers at MIT, Boston University, and the University of Michigan shows that people, companies, and the economy as a whole can all benefit and grow when we forget what we think we know about property rights and compensate people fairly for the work they do.

Take off your rose-colored glasses, put on your headphones, and listen to this interview with one of those researchers, Marshall Van Alstyne, as he explains how innovation and fair compensation can go hand in hand.

Listen:
or download
…also in Ogg!

Reference Section:
Find the full text of Marshall Van Alstyne’s working paper The Social Efficiency of Fairness

Reach Marshall with comments here or here

CC-licensed music this week:
Scott Altham: Hear Us Now (poptastic mix)
Neurowaxx: Haram Beat
Photo by Kevin Eddy

Subscribe to Radio Berkman

See a partial transcript after the jump.

One of the mixed blessings of the web is in how much it changes the way we think of the “economy”. Before terms like “knowledge workers” and “the information economy” became buzzphrases, our economy was heavily one of “tangible goods”. The good thing about tangible goods is that we had a relatively reliable standard by which to judge value and compensation. If you own an orchard and you have a nice apple crop you could make a pretty decent prediction of the value of that crop. Based on that value, you can look at your workers, how many hours they worked, and figure out a wage for what they contributed.

Okay, that’s a radical simplification – I’m neither a farmer nor an economist – but the scenario of an economy based on tangible goods looks radically simple when put side by side with an economy based on information goods. I mean how do you know what a song is worth? How about a piece of software? An AIDS vaccine, or a cure for cancer? There are so many factors involved in valuing these kinds of products it could make your head explode.

But the fact is – we have to try and put a value on these information goods – after all we have to pay the folks who make them, and encourage the creation of the next great song, piece of software, or vaccine.

The problem is – right now the economy of information goods is still kinda coming into conflict with the economy of tangible goods. And with the value of those information goods shifting around, people aren’t necessarily getting paid fairly or properly credited for their contributions.

And THAT MIGHT BE the most important, and least discussed, reason why innovation slows down. When you’re not sure how you’re going to get paid for your great idea, you are more likely to hoard it. When you hoard your idea, it can’t grow and benefit from the contributions of others.

Well Marshall Van Alstyne (ALL-STEIN) interprets this all as a question of fairness. Marshall is an Associate Professor at Boston University and Research Scientist at MIT who has just written a working paper called The Social Efficiency of Fairness. And he has some great ideas for how we could compensate people fairly in the information economy, and spark innovation.

========

Marshall is an Associate Professor at Boston University and Research Scientist at MIT who has just written a working paper called The Social Efficiency of Fairness. He’s accepting comments on that paper – which you can find a link to on our website http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman

This episode of Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, with help this week from the Law Lab, who coordinated today’s interview at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
• 

Entry Filed under: audio,Berkman Center,radioberkman