What's Free in the Internet, Part 2

Now it's interesting that historically in all societies there has been a strong bias against people who are doing things for commercial purposes. Whether it be in ancient China or in medieval Europe, somehow the merchant was at the bottom of the social hierarchy. You know, the king and the warrior and the scholar, these people were considered more worthy and even the peasant was considered more worthy than the merchant. I think this is extremely unfair. A lot of the innovation that has taken place in science and a lot of the support for artistic and cultural activity and, in fact, the creation of writing, many of these innovations have been inspired by commercial activities. The first writing systems were developed to keep accounts of grain and goods that were stored in ancient Samaria.

I’m kind of rambling a bit here but this is not to say that people are not motivated by altruism; I think everyone is. I think we are all motivated to help other people and I think that this is something innate in people; it comes from a sense of reciprocity. I enjoy giving to others but part of that is the hope that I will get back from others. I think from an evolutionary perspective, when our great ancestors hunted an animal we would invite everyone. If I killed an animal I would invite everyone to share in the food because this meant that I could expect the same treatment from the others so I think we have an innate sense of reciprocity.

But, what has happened with the money economy is that as our societies developed and people began trading all of a sudden we needed a medium. In other words, I can’t barter with my doctor and my dentist and my grocer and my shoemaker and everyone else whose services I like to use. I cannot offer my skills. I have a company that’s involved in the trading of lumber where I am able to use my knowledge and the knowledge of my employees in a variety of different fields in order to earn some money and then I am able to take this money and spend it on goods and services that I want to consume or, for that matter, to give it away to charities that I support or to have it taken away from me by the government in the form of taxes which, in principle, I also agree with because it enables us a community to share a number of common services whether it be our health service or our transportation services or simply the local public park where everyone can go and enjoy themselves. Yeah, there are free services within every society but someone is paying; someone has to pay. I think when we see the word “free” we have to be very clear as to who is paying. If I have access to free medical care in Canada it’s because everyone in society is paying through their taxes.

So, which services should people pay for on their own? If someone likes to go to Hawaii on holidays should that be free? Should I pay for someone else to go on holidays? If someone likes a big car and I want a small car should I pay for them to have a big car? I mean, it’s not very difficult to establish the fact that certain goods and services should be paid for by the person who likes to consume those goods and services.

Now, let’s get back to the area of education. Obviously, there is a great benefit to individuals and to society at large if people are well educated and it is unfair that some people who are wealthy are able to have a better education than people who are not wealthy. I think most people accept the idea that we should try to equalize opportunity as much as possible, not only within a country but also internationally. The idea that we have free educational services is an idea that people instinctively like but we have to be careful. Most of the people who provide those educational services, whether they are teachers or professors or volunteers, they all also need to have income in order to purchase the things that they need.

All of this is kind of leading to the model that we want to use in LingQ. This is a model where people can volunteer their time by providing content and other forms of help in their own language to help other people who are learning that language. These people have every right to put a price on the help or service they are providing. They may choose to provide it free of charge but then when they go to learn another language, they may have to pay so they may say well, I want so many points for talking to someone in Spanish or for creating content in French or Chinese or Japanese. Or, they may say no, I do this for free because I enjoy doing it and I enjoy helping people but this should be their choice. I don’t think this should be imposed on them by the system so we want to encourage people to contribute on whatever terms they choose to contribute. Someone who creates something and wishes to earn points, we consider that very understandable and, at the same time, we also are happy to receive content, for example, that people are contributing without getting any compensation in the form of points but the choice will be with people.