Comment by kawhah

> Most complex, unique, value producing things have a path to monetization for the builder of the thing.

I don't think this is true. You need an extra condition 'that few people want to produce'.

There is lots of good free art. Why? Because lots of people want to be artists and make art. There is tons of good free writing. Why? Because lots of people want to write. There is masses of good free music. Why? Because many, many people enjoy making music.

There aren't people who collect garbage, clean toilets, dig holes in the ground, or work in oil refineries for free. But there are people publishing science, doing research, writing philosophy, producing erotic material, designing things, putting on theatre, producing textbooks and teaching people things, making clothes, thinking of jokes, answering questions, providing peer support to addicts, playing music, making games, making animations, all without monetary compensation. This is because the people doing these things want to do them.

This isn't a failure of our economic system. It's a great thing - it makes the products better, the producers happier (provided they have the economic freedom to spend time on these projects) and the consumers better off.

First of all, it's obvious that in the vast majority of cases, writing free software falls into the 'amateur art' category not the 'dirty, boring and necessary job' category. Many, many people enjoy the time spent on writing and maintaining software, are motivated to solve their and other people's problems, and take pride in doing so well. You might expect that only games, intellectual toys or fanciful projects would motivate people to work on them in their free time. The reality is that software projects which could be seen as dry and boring to non-technical people (OS kernel design, file transfer protocols, laptop power management support, database and webserver stability, document rendering) attract many very talented people to work on them.

Secondly, if we think that there's some deep inequality or instability in our society because (for example) critical Internet infrastructure depends on hobbyists and volunteers, doesn't it make more sense to try and improve the conditions for hobbyists and volunteers, and make it possible for there to be more of them? The alternative put forward seems to be to turn them into more of the people who both don't enjoy the time spent on what they do, nor produce the best product that they can.