The New York Times Magazine (June 6) has an article "What the Bagel Man Saw" (link is short-term) about an economist who reformed and went into the business of "Bagel Day" -- once-a-week deliveries of bagels and doughnuts to offices. People pay on an honor system, and the focus of the article is about the nuances of non-payment rates. (Factoids: those higher up the corporate food chain cheat more than those lower down, and "law firms aren't worth the trouble.")

The overall payment rate over the years is 89%, but the variation is considerable among workplaces. Also, theft of the money boxes is only 1 in 7,000 per year.

This is cheery news for the IP debate over downloading. It means that the overwhelming majority of people do indeed recognize both the moral and the practical need to pay, to be fair to the provider and to one's fellow workers, and to keep those bagels coming. No one rationalizes, "Well, he is coming anyway, so the marginal cost of this bagel is only a dime and he is ripping me off."

So, as the content industry has long argued, the key to solving the downloading problem is to reinforce people's innate moral sensibilities, and, of course, to make the musical bagels readily available over the Internet at reasonable prices.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:22 AM | General

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