There is always a cost, so how are you paying it?
In Ep #4 I examine the topic of free, first taking a dive into the definition of the word and how we can get confused about objects/services that appear to be financially ‘free’. There seems to be a problem with scale where a company as it grows larger will inevitably focus upon money as its primary goal (not a great motive) and the cost that a customer pays can get hidden (lack of transparency). To combat any negative effects from this I share how I’m personally trying to change my own mentality and some actions I’m taking to realise that ‘free isn’t free’.
A huge thanks to Aaron from Salonomics for supporting the show!
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Welcome you beautiful, beautifulsoul to episode four of the value for value podcast, thetitle for today is free isn't free. So we're going to belooking into the topic of freedom and how this relatesinto the value for value model. So recently, I was listening toEpisode 52, of podcasting 2.0, with Nikolai and this topic wasbrought up so it was around the 30 to 32 minute mark, if youwant to go examine that, and I've heard this been talkedabout numerous times before by Adam curry, the inventor of thevalue for value model. And I thought it would be worthexploring today, because there is a bit of a pernicious side tothe word free, I'm going to start off with a definition, ifyou've followed the main models at all before you would knowthis is something I quite like to do get a definition of theword and then you can really hone in on what you're trying toexpress and say. So I looked up the definition of the word free.And here's a couple of things that came up. So you can look atit in the adjective form. So this would be something likeable to act or be done as one wishes, or not under the controlof another or not confined or imprisoned or not subject toengagement slash obligation. So this is where you're thinkingmore of the term free will or free time, there's nothing thatis imposing on me stopping me from using whatever it is that Ihave. Now, the other is more the adverb formed. And this iswithout cost or payment. So this is implying that there's afinancial side to this. So you know, you can get this by one,get one free, offer something along the lines of that. And Ithink we can confuse these two definitions to our detriment, oreven think that if no money is involved, there are no costs atall. So you know, if I get something free, there's justnothing in it that there is underlying, that's going to hurtme or make me need to pay in any sort of way. And I don't thinkthat is true. And hence the title of today, free isn't free,there's always something beneath it. I want to dive more intothis topic by looking at the problem of scale. And inparticular, this is when we're talking about companies and how,as things grow and get larger one the cost or payment can gethidden. So this is where you're getting something for free. Butit's like, Hey, how is this actually working, if you'regetting, you know, a backpack or a material thing, or a good oran object? You know, the world doesn't conjure up thingsrandomly. There is always someone doing something behindthat. And it's very useful to know, you know how that cost orpayment is occurring. And then the other thing is that motivescan become money driven. So this is where you're thinking of acompany that's growing. And maybe they had a core structureat the start something they really wanted to do. But then asthey started getting more overheads, as they startedgetting more people that becomes more diluted. And you can seethat they now have to account to shareholders, they now have toworry about all these employees that are asking for benefits andfor, you know, a regular paycheck as as you sort of do.So I'm going to give two examples here of something thatrecently popped up for me. So the other day, I went to aBitcoin meetup of all things.
And it was a fabulous time,there was probably about 40 to 50 people there, you go in andyou know, they've got free drinks, they've got free food,there's people mingling, there's all sorts of things. They havea, you know, beautiful setup, they do some presentationsafterwards, there was a bar tab also for free. And you canreally look at this and go, Oh, geez, man, how is this actuallyhappening? And the great thing with this is because it's a tinylittle event, and you know, I got to personally meet Lucas,the guy who was doing it, he's been on the Mere Mortals podcastbefore, if you want to check him out. And I got that personalconnection, I could really see how this was happening. Oh,okay. You know, he's real into Bitcoin. And he wants otherpeople to know more about it.
And there is some companies alsopresenting here who are doing things with cryptocurrency. So,you know, potentially, they're going to be paying for thistime, this attention that they're getting. So with thissort of thing, you can really see like, okay, there was freestuff, but I'm pretty aware of where that came from. It's notlike it's just magically appeared out of nowhere. There'salways caveats to these things, of course, but you know, I'musing this as a general example. The other end of the scale wouldbe something like Spotify. And I'm going to pick on them for alittle bit at the moment. And you can really see with a lot ofthings they're doing at the moment, they're exclusive. Sothis is the Joe Rogan's. This is the Call Her Daddy's the et cetera,et cetera, a big podcast, when they're, I'm gonna sayadvertising for Spotify. And there have been, you know,instances of them on their own shows saying, Hey, we're onSpotify now like or just as they're about to move over toSpotify. We're going to Spotify, it's going to be free, you know,emphasizing this real fee free, free, free, free factor in it.
But the problem with this is, isno transparency and how I'm paying. Spotify is a giganticcompany, they have huge amounts of people, how are they managingto deliver this service, which obviously has all theinfrastructure, it has all the, you know, technical things, thelawyers, the getting all these artists getting all thesepodcasts, all of these things require money and time andenergy and effort. And, you know, where is the free Nesscoming from? And, you know, if you had to ask me, I would say,I'm not particularly sure I'm I can make some guesses at it, Ican guess that it's coming from money from advertisers, I canguess that it's from them taking my data, I can guess it's from,you know, a bunch of other ways that there is possible thatthey're just trying to gain attention now. And then they'llimplement some sort of paywall or something afterwards. So Ican make some guesses. But there's real no transparency, I,one, don't know where the costs and payments are. So I don'teven know how they really operating and how much theyhave, I guess I could go into their financial reports and sortof see that. And then also, obviously, their motives are tomake money. There's they're very much driven by that. And I'llexplain more about that in a second. But it seems inevitablethat companies are going to focus on money. The good onestry and maintain that core to some degree. So as I justmentioned, if you go on to right now, the Spotify desktop, andlook this up, there are 33 words that are up here in this veryminimal design, four of them are free. And if you scroll down alittle bit, you'll see another two as well. So obviously, theyare really trying to emphasize this free factor. But what isSpotify is core, what are they trying to do? What are they, youknow, what is their mission in life, their purpose? If I had toguess from that, it's to give away free things. But okay,this, this can't work long term, how is that going to happen? SoI wanted to now just talk a little bit about, you know, whatcan I do as a as an individual and sort of practicality becausethe the problem with free freeness is, it's a socket tohuman development. I'm just like everyone else, if there'ssomething free, it pings up on my radar and cycle, I can getsomething without having to pay a cost that, you know, this isbeautiful. This is magic. This is the best of all possibleworlds sort of thing. But no, it doesn't work like that. There'salways an underlying thing behind that. So for me, I thinka mind shift, a mindset shift is somewhat required. Now, thisdoesn't require immediate action. But when we're lookingat I'll relate it back to what I was talking about in episode 52,of podcasting. 2.0, Nikolai, and Africans, they have a somewhatinherent distrust in which I think a healthy amount is it'svery good for for anybody. So if a you know, a Namibian is comingup to another Namibian and telling him about this freething, they're not instantly going, oh, man, that'sbeautiful. Like what's, how can I get this because I have thislittle bit of distrust that saying, This guy's probablygoing to fuck me over. Now. on a large scale, that's really bad.You know, the some of the best indicators that are a country isdoing well is the level of trust between citizens because thenyou can operate and do business and finance and commercialaspects. And you can have assurance that, okay, if I givethis guy money, he's going to give me this product, or ifthere's an agreement it's going to come through. But the problemwith that then is you can become too trustworthy. And then that'swhen the freeness factor can sort of get you and you're like,oh, shit, everything's free all look, goodness, in the world,everything's free. Without under having that mindset that youknow what, that's, that's not really true. And I'm payingsomehow, and I might not really be liking how I'm paying, thiscould be a terrible decision for me. So starting with the, themindset, I think is useful. And just recognizing, hey, there's,there's going to be a cost for everything. The next would be,you know, trying to start identify in your day to daylife, where the cost might be how these small moments mightnot really be that great. So, this is particularly useful forwhen something is being advertised. Oh, you can getthis, you know, extra pizza 25% Free 25% larger for $0 orwhatever.
Okay, how is that happening?Like, what what's the underlying basis behind that? If I buythree car tires and get one free? Is that really free? Or isit you know, just a clever little ploy then jacking up theprices of the other three? You know, there's just no I'mfinding it more and more useful to try to identify these thingsin my day to day life and then recognizing, you know what, Idon't need to buy an extra cake. Just to be able to get a thirdone free when you know one is fine. So there's all sorts oflittle ploys, wrapped up within that. And then this is harkeningback to the previous episode, I would also say, you know, startexpanding your your generosity, because there are people outthere who are doing things amazing, which benefit you. Andthe cost might be something that they're willing to bear for acertain extent. So for me is, uh, one thing that happenedrecently in the Bitcoin event, I made sure I went up to Lucasafterwards and said, Hey, I really appreciate everythingyou're doing here, you know, how can I help? How can I make thisbetter for you? Or do you want, you know, anything? Becausedoing that is like an a recognition that, hey, thisisn't free. Now, maybe he did it out of his own goodwill, maybehas other things behind that.
But you know what, that's alsonice for me to go out and verify that in a way. Another one wasjust today, actually, I've been talking about this for a whilethat Wikipedia is an amazing resource I've used it for Godknows how many years and I've never paid anything for it, noteven with advertisements, because I don't believe they doadvertisements at all. I'm willing to be corrected on that.But I can't recall seeing advertisements ever onWikipedia. And I thought, holy crap, this is been one of themost beneficial things ever for me, I've gained so muchknowledge, I've learned so much from this. It's not the be alland end all of truth seeking but god damn, it's pretty good. Iprobably should donate, I probably should give them somevalue back. And so I did that today for the first time, thefountain app as well, and one of the podcasting 2.0 apps. I'vebeen using it a lot, but I haven't been sending that manySatoshis through it, because I prefer doing that on some of theothers. So today, I signed up for their little premiumcontent, I didn't need to do that. There's nothing in therethat I've really particularly want. But I've been using theapp, and I felt somewhat obligated that, hey, if I wantto really maintain this mindset of free isn't free, I need toyou implement that in my own actions as well. So, you know,withdrawing your support is another way as well as isrecognizing for me Spotify, if I'm not paying for it, somehow,there's there's going to be some consequences for that. And, youknow, I'm not super comfortable with whatever it is that they'redoing. Because I just don't know, I don't know how that ismaking money if it's not from, you know, a direct transfer fromme, for example. So that's all I have today, some thoughts on whyfree isn't free. And now this podcast is value for valueenabled. And I do want to start giving some shout outs to peoplewho are helping me along with this. So I received a very nicebooster gram from Aaron who runs the salah nomics podcast inEngland. So if you want to know more about hairdressing man,that's the podcast for you. And he sent to me, thanks for thetips I agree with you are either reaching out on social tointeract with people. So this is hearkening back to my previousepisode, episode three. It's all about putting positive vibes outthere not for anyone else's benefit but your own, giving usbetter than receiving a similar feeling when we got our firstreview. Hey, thanks so much, Erin. I really do appreciatethat. That was 1000 Satoshis sent using curio caster totallyagreement, I mean, you know, you're agreeing with my message.So I'm agreeing with myself in a way but that that positivity,that is the first value for value, booster gram. So, youknow, you are now in the annals of history. And man, I really doappreciate that man, it's so much fun, your you know, 40cents or 50 cents Australian, whatever it is that that equatesto nowadays, if I just found that on the street, you know,that would have meant nothing to me. I would have walked over itif it was in coins, probably.
And I actually did Yeah, theother day, that was 40 cents laying on the street. I didn't Ididn't pick it up. But that message, holy shit,man, that that really means a lot to me, it means so much thatyou've put that time and effort into it. And for all thoseothers people listening as well. You know, there's so many smallthings you can do to brighten up someone's day to provide valueand to to help out. So that's it for today. If you want to helpme you can stream Satoshis while listening to this on any of thea lot of the 2.0 apps I'll give you a little fun fact as wellfor today. So I recently found out that if you are using anAndroid Auto car, so car which has Android or Android Auto toconnect to if you use podcast addict, you will be able to seethe chapter images in that so I tested that out the other daywith my co host want on the new models car and I just thinkthat's super cool then he was loving it as well. So a littletip for you there on value for value. I'm always trying toprovide some value. So if I can do that in a small way as wellthat that brings me joy. And other than that, I really hopeyou're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world.Kyrin out
Welcome you beautiful, beautifulsoul to episode four of the value for value podcast, thetitle for today is free isn't free. So we're going to belooking into the topic of freedom and how this relatesinto the value for value model. So recently, I was listening toEpisode 52, of podcasting 2.0, with Nikolai and this topic wasbrought up so it was around the 30 to 32 minute mark, if youwant to go examine that, and I've heard this been talkedabout numerous times before by Adam curry, the inventor of thevalue for value model. And I thought it would be worthexploring today, because there is a bit of a pernicious side tothe word free, I'm going to start off with a definition, ifyou've followed the main models at all before you would knowthis is something I quite like to do get a definition of theword and then you can really hone in on what you're trying toexpress and say. So I looked up the definition of the word free.And here's a couple of things that came up. So you can look atit in the adjective form. So this would be something likeable to act or be done as one wishes, or not under the controlof another or not confined or imprisoned or not subject toengagement slash obligation. So this is where you're thinkingmore of the term free will or free time, there's nothing thatis imposing on me stopping me from using whatever it is that Ihave. Now, the other is more the adverb formed. And this iswithout cost or payment. So this is implying that there's afinancial side to this. So you know, you can get this by one,get one free, offer something along the lines of that. And Ithink we can confuse these two definitions to our detriment, oreven think that if no money is involved, there are no costs atall. So you know, if I get something free, there's justnothing in it that there is underlying, that's going to hurtme or make me need to pay in any sort of way. And I don't thinkthat is true. And hence the title of today, free isn't free,there's always something beneath it. I want to dive more intothis topic by looking at the problem of scale. And inparticular, this is when we're talking about companies and how,as things grow and get larger one the cost or payment can gethidden. So this is where you're getting something for free. Butit's like, Hey, how is this actually working, if you'regetting, you know, a backpack or a material thing, or a good oran object? You know, the world doesn't conjure up thingsrandomly. There is always someone doing something behindthat. And it's very useful to know, you know how that cost orpayment is occurring. And then the other thing is that motivescan become money driven. So this is where you're thinking of acompany that's growing. And maybe they had a core structureat the start something they really wanted to do. But then asthey started getting more overheads, as they startedgetting more people that becomes more diluted. And you can seethat they now have to account to shareholders, they now have toworry about all these employees that are asking for benefits andfor, you know, a regular paycheck as as you sort of do.So I'm going to give two examples here of something thatrecently popped up for me. So the other day, I went to aBitcoin meetup of all things.
And it was a fabulous time,there was probably about 40 to 50 people there, you go in andyou know, they've got free drinks, they've got free food,there's people mingling, there's all sorts of things. They havea, you know, beautiful setup, they do some presentationsafterwards, there was a bar tab also for free. And you canreally look at this and go, Oh, geez, man, how is this actuallyhappening? And the great thing with this is because it's a tinylittle event, and you know, I got to personally meet Lucas,the guy who was doing it, he's been on the Mere Mortals podcastbefore, if you want to check him out. And I got that personalconnection, I could really see how this was happening. Oh,okay. You know, he's real into Bitcoin. And he wants otherpeople to know more about it.
And there is some companies alsopresenting here who are doing things with cryptocurrency. So,you know, potentially, they're going to be paying for thistime, this attention that they're getting. So with thissort of thing, you can really see like, okay, there was freestuff, but I'm pretty aware of where that came from. It's notlike it's just magically appeared out of nowhere. There'salways caveats to these things, of course, but you know, I'musing this as a general example. The other end of the scale wouldbe something like Spotify. And I'm going to pick on them for alittle bit at the moment. And you can really see with a lot ofthings they're doing at the moment, they're exclusive. Sothis is the Joe Rogan's. This is the Call Her Daddy's the et cetera,et cetera, a big podcast, when they're, I'm gonna sayadvertising for Spotify. And there have been, you know,instances of them on their own shows saying, Hey, we're onSpotify now like or just as they're about to move over toSpotify. We're going to Spotify, it's going to be free, you know,emphasizing this real fee free, free, free, free factor in it.
But the problem with this is, isno transparency and how I'm paying. Spotify is a giganticcompany, they have huge amounts of people, how are they managingto deliver this service, which obviously has all theinfrastructure, it has all the, you know, technical things, thelawyers, the getting all these artists getting all thesepodcasts, all of these things require money and time andenergy and effort. And, you know, where is the free Nesscoming from? And, you know, if you had to ask me, I would say,I'm not particularly sure I'm I can make some guesses at it, Ican guess that it's coming from money from advertisers, I canguess that it's from them taking my data, I can guess it's from,you know, a bunch of other ways that there is possible thatthey're just trying to gain attention now. And then they'llimplement some sort of paywall or something afterwards. So Ican make some guesses. But there's real no transparency, I,one, don't know where the costs and payments are. So I don'teven know how they really operating and how much theyhave, I guess I could go into their financial reports and sortof see that. And then also, obviously, their motives are tomake money. There's they're very much driven by that. And I'llexplain more about that in a second. But it seems inevitablethat companies are going to focus on money. The good onestry and maintain that core to some degree. So as I justmentioned, if you go on to right now, the Spotify desktop, andlook this up, there are 33 words that are up here in this veryminimal design, four of them are free. And if you scroll down alittle bit, you'll see another two as well. So obviously, theyare really trying to emphasize this free factor. But what isSpotify is core, what are they trying to do? What are they, youknow, what is their mission in life, their purpose? If I had toguess from that, it's to give away free things. But okay,this, this can't work long term, how is that going to happen? SoI wanted to now just talk a little bit about, you know, whatcan I do as a as an individual and sort of practicality becausethe the problem with free freeness is, it's a socket tohuman development. I'm just like everyone else, if there'ssomething free, it pings up on my radar and cycle, I can getsomething without having to pay a cost that, you know, this isbeautiful. This is magic. This is the best of all possibleworlds sort of thing. But no, it doesn't work like that. There'salways an underlying thing behind that. So for me, I thinka mind shift, a mindset shift is somewhat required. Now, thisdoesn't require immediate action. But when we're lookingat I'll relate it back to what I was talking about in episode 52,of podcasting. 2.0, Nikolai, and Africans, they have a somewhatinherent distrust in which I think a healthy amount is it'svery good for for anybody. So if a you know, a Namibian is comingup to another Namibian and telling him about this freething, they're not instantly going, oh, man, that'sbeautiful. Like what's, how can I get this because I have thislittle bit of distrust that saying, This guy's probablygoing to fuck me over. Now. on a large scale, that's really bad.You know, the some of the best indicators that are a country isdoing well is the level of trust between citizens because thenyou can operate and do business and finance and commercialaspects. And you can have assurance that, okay, if I givethis guy money, he's going to give me this product, or ifthere's an agreement it's going to come through. But the problemwith that then is you can become too trustworthy. And then that'swhen the freeness factor can sort of get you and you're like,oh, shit, everything's free all look, goodness, in the world,everything's free. Without under having that mindset that youknow what, that's, that's not really true. And I'm payingsomehow, and I might not really be liking how I'm paying, thiscould be a terrible decision for me. So starting with the, themindset, I think is useful. And just recognizing, hey, there's,there's going to be a cost for everything. The next would be,you know, trying to start identify in your day to daylife, where the cost might be how these small moments mightnot really be that great. So, this is particularly useful forwhen something is being advertised. Oh, you can getthis, you know, extra pizza 25% Free 25% larger for $0 orwhatever.
Okay, how is that happening?Like, what what's the underlying basis behind that? If I buythree car tires and get one free? Is that really free? Or isit you know, just a clever little ploy then jacking up theprices of the other three? You know, there's just no I'mfinding it more and more useful to try to identify these thingsin my day to day life and then recognizing, you know what, Idon't need to buy an extra cake. Just to be able to get a thirdone free when you know one is fine. So there's all sorts oflittle ploys, wrapped up within that. And then this is harkeningback to the previous episode, I would also say, you know, startexpanding your your generosity, because there are people outthere who are doing things amazing, which benefit you. Andthe cost might be something that they're willing to bear for acertain extent. So for me is, uh, one thing that happenedrecently in the Bitcoin event, I made sure I went up to Lucasafterwards and said, Hey, I really appreciate everythingyou're doing here, you know, how can I help? How can I make thisbetter for you? Or do you want, you know, anything? Becausedoing that is like an a recognition that, hey, thisisn't free. Now, maybe he did it out of his own goodwill, maybehas other things behind that.
But you know what, that's alsonice for me to go out and verify that in a way. Another one wasjust today, actually, I've been talking about this for a whilethat Wikipedia is an amazing resource I've used it for Godknows how many years and I've never paid anything for it, noteven with advertisements, because I don't believe they doadvertisements at all. I'm willing to be corrected on that.But I can't recall seeing advertisements ever onWikipedia. And I thought, holy crap, this is been one of themost beneficial things ever for me, I've gained so muchknowledge, I've learned so much from this. It's not the be alland end all of truth seeking but god damn, it's pretty good. Iprobably should donate, I probably should give them somevalue back. And so I did that today for the first time, thefountain app as well, and one of the podcasting 2.0 apps. I'vebeen using it a lot, but I haven't been sending that manySatoshis through it, because I prefer doing that on some of theothers. So today, I signed up for their little premiumcontent, I didn't need to do that. There's nothing in therethat I've really particularly want. But I've been using theapp, and I felt somewhat obligated that, hey, if I wantto really maintain this mindset of free isn't free, I need toyou implement that in my own actions as well. So, you know,withdrawing your support is another way as well as isrecognizing for me Spotify, if I'm not paying for it, somehow,there's there's going to be some consequences for that. And, youknow, I'm not super comfortable with whatever it is that they'redoing. Because I just don't know, I don't know how that ismaking money if it's not from, you know, a direct transfer fromme, for example. So that's all I have today, some thoughts on whyfree isn't free. And now this podcast is value for valueenabled. And I do want to start giving some shout outs to peoplewho are helping me along with this. So I received a very nicebooster gram from Aaron who runs the salah nomics podcast inEngland. So if you want to know more about hairdressing man,that's the podcast for you. And he sent to me, thanks for thetips I agree with you are either reaching out on social tointeract with people. So this is hearkening back to my previousepisode, episode three. It's all about putting positive vibes outthere not for anyone else's benefit but your own, giving usbetter than receiving a similar feeling when we got our firstreview. Hey, thanks so much, Erin. I really do appreciatethat. That was 1000 Satoshis sent using curio caster totallyagreement, I mean, you know, you're agreeing with my message.So I'm agreeing with myself in a way but that that positivity,that is the first value for value, booster gram. So, youknow, you are now in the annals of history. And man, I really doappreciate that man, it's so much fun, your you know, 40cents or 50 cents Australian, whatever it is that that equatesto nowadays, if I just found that on the street, you know,that would have meant nothing to me. I would have walked over itif it was in coins, probably.
And I actually did Yeah, theother day, that was 40 cents laying on the street. I didn't Ididn't pick it up. But that message, holy shit,man, that that really means a lot to me, it means so much thatyou've put that time and effort into it. And for all thoseothers people listening as well. You know, there's so many smallthings you can do to brighten up someone's day to provide valueand to to help out. So that's it for today. If you want to helpme you can stream Satoshis while listening to this on any of thea lot of the 2.0 apps I'll give you a little fun fact as wellfor today. So I recently found out that if you are using anAndroid Auto car, so car which has Android or Android Auto toconnect to if you use podcast addict, you will be able to seethe chapter images in that so I tested that out the other daywith my co host want on the new models car and I just thinkthat's super cool then he was loving it as well. So a littletip for you there on value for value. I'm always trying toprovide some value. So if I can do that in a small way as wellthat that brings me joy. And other than that, I really hopeyou're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world.Kyrin out
