Ownership to Belonging by Matthew Stalder
Scarcity makes art expensive, but the scarcity in literature is not the same, because if a published prints and sells 10,000 copied, they are tempted to print more, and have to worry about other folks photocopying these books—they will never become scarce, unless one is trying to obtain 18th century copy of Voltaire for several hundred dollars. The books authors are writing, as stated in an earlier post. The work isn’t their own, but an amalgam of various sources. For novelist this isn't the case because they write about scenarios. I’ve taken a writing course months ago, a professor stated that publishers won’t consider novels over 25 pages (I believe). Sadly, people don’t have the patience flipping through pages, rather have their eyes glued to a computer screen. Water is available to all people, its controversial, but it still considered a public good. Radio music is free and also public parks and librarys. Private goods are products and services that are monetized in most cases, or given to a selected few. Stalder mentions common-pool goods, or ‘club goods’ which reminds me of fitness or Netflix memberships, CTA fare. Stalder speaks about ‘club goods’ like we talk about public domain, free access to information. And when he mentions, the book belonging to you, and you the literature—yes, we do in most cases benefit from the information read, or learn lessons from it. After all, that’s why the author writes. Again, they have in an interest, and want to share it with the public (earlier post).