Reaction to "Priced to Sell," by Malcolm Gladwell

In the book review of Chris Anderson’s book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, written by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker, more questions than answers are brought to light. And so goes for my reaction.

A big question to be asked is, what is the value of intellect and ideas? A favorite quote of mine goes like this: “Poor minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, but great minds talk about ideas.” So if it is to be exalted when someone presents an idea, why in the world are we making this free? Should there not be a cost? Have we somewhere along the line confused priceless with free?

A noteworthy thing within Anderson’s book is the fact that it IS a book in the first place. That, and the price is $26.99. I find it ironic that a person who is encouraging a shift in mindset from scarcity to abundance in the digital age is asking quite a pretty penny for a book! Anderson argues that you can try to deter this “free” mindset with laws and regulations, but that eventually the economic gravity will win. So does this mean that eventually, we should all work for free? Going on this principle, then, why did he not write his book for free? Oh, the incongruence and hypocrisy.

This brings to mind a question of motivation. If people are to work for free, will they work as hard? Should all work be based upon volunteerism? What are the non-monetary rewards, and motivations, for this type of work? This calls to mind what someone’s time is worth. How could we make a living? Would we all just live on rations? Anderson addresses this issue by calling into play the idea of making money “around” ideas, such as Google making money off of advertising. How would a writer, or any type of artist really, make money around their work, when their work is in their ideas?

There are myriad questions that this essay brings to mind, but paramount to these questions is, who does information belong to? Does the original bearer of the information have rights? Anderson’s idea that “information wants to be free” seems incredulous in that information is not a conscious entity seeking release. I particularly responded to Gladwell’s snippet of response in asking why a corporation’s self-interested motivations for profit are being elevated to a philosophical principle. I want to know the same thing. To me, this seems like moral relativism in the highest, since the justification for a company’s bad behavior is being brought to a level of assigning conscious awareness to ideas that are a human being’s rightful property. By taking the human being who originated the idea out of the equation, and just labeling it information, he makes it seem more acceptable to disavow recognition for that person. All sorts of scary things start happening when we start dehumanizing.

Anderson encourages us to go from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. He bases this on the idea that there are four sectors in which to think about “Free:” technological, (digital infrastructure is often free), psychological (consumers love free), procedural (free means never having to make a judgment), and commercial (the market created can make a lot of money). Are these four sectors the only ones to worry about? There are too many facets to even list here, much less explain. What about our economy? We clearly are not living in an abundant economy right now, and times are tough for everyone. Abundance mindsets are microcosmic in nature—not considering the whole picture. Digitally and technologically, things might be abundant, but this is not true in other ways, not even mathematically in most cases. We live on a finite planet, with limited resources. There is no “abundance” principle. This goes against the most fundamental economic principle of supply and demand. There is always a balance to be obtained, and very infrequently a surplus. Factor in our overpopulation problem globally, and there is even less of an “abundance mindset.”

This brings to mind the value we place on original thought and ideas, even intellect. In a recent discussion with an English professor friend in another state, she brought to mind how many professors are forced to piecemeal their wages from various part-time jobs, yet expected to sustain themselves on their love of teaching alone. Then they are asked to turn around and promote, to their students, the value of original thinking and independent intellect. It is all terribly sad. I am gambling on the hope that my college education will impart knowledge and skills that are marketable. But if my knowledge and skills are offered for free, is my marketability, and more specifically, profitability, just a pipe dream? I’d say so. It’s a terrifying time to be looking for a career.

This essay also got me to thinking about an interesting psychological idea. If there is psychology to free, then there must be psychology to expensive. My reclamation grocery store, called Markdown Market, which I closed about a year ago, was very very cheap to shop at, but people often preferred the same products for more money at competing stores. When I inquired about this, many of them responded that in having food stamp benefits, it didn’t matter if they spent more money, because their food was free. Do people inherently, in some psychological, behavioral fashion, value what costs more over what costs less? Do they believe that paying more for something makes it inherently better in some manner? Or do they just not care because it’s free? It’s an intriguing concept, yet to me, a very ignorant one. Anderson’s idea that there are two markets—zero and all other prices—seems absurd to me at best, but potentially correct at worst. I certainly hope that in all this promotion of free ideas, we are getting some educated ones: if you can pay less for something, do it, but do not take just because something’s free. There is ALWAYS a cost somewhere.