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November 5, 2007
Value-for-Value - A New Approach to Exchange for Mutual Benefit
By Kitty Antonik
Asking for contributions/donations or having fixed prices are not the only ways to obtain money (flexibly exchangeable commodity) from those who value what a person produces or provides.
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Rob Kall's recent request for donations to cover OpEdNews.com's expenses reminded me to make the PayPal transfer I had intended for a couple weeks now. His short note to thank me for my support prompted me to suggest that he might want to consider using the concept of Value-for-Value - the idea that each individual return value to the creator/producer of something commensurate with the value s/he receives from that something, in this case information. My husband Paul Wakfer and I created this idea - at least we had not seen it used or described anywhere else before we began writing on it - and we use it for our own websites. It is new and different - a paradigm shift from a required price by a seller or a request for donations. The idea also requires a fair amount of self-responsibility, something that is still greatly lacking everywhere in the world, but is truly necessary for there to be real progress in cooperative human interactions.So how, one might ask, is a reader of information to determine what value s/he has obtained from an article or webpage read? Imagine a cost which you would certainly not have paid for it. Suppose that is US$100, then imagine the cost had been 1/2 of that (ie US$50) and ask yourself if you would have paid that price. If yes, then imagine the price had been 1/2 way between that and the higher price which you already dismissed (ie US$75), and ask yourself again. If no at the US$50 price, then imagine a price 1/2 that (ie US$25) and ask yourself again. Continue in this manner (which is called a binary search) until you have reached the exact price that is the point at which, for any higher price, you would not have bought it. After a bit of practice, such an estimating process should be able to be done quite quickly to reach a sufficiently precise result.
Actually this is very close to what is called "price negotiation", "bargaining" or "haggling" and is widely practiced in many cultures. The difference is merely that this is "purchaser determined pricing" and takes place after the fact of obtaining the desired service - information from the creators of whatever web article or page having been read. You can also think of this as a kind of auction in which you are bidding with yourself.
Note however, that one of the major advantages of the Value-for-Value approach is that you have already had full use of that which you are evaluating and thus have a pretty good idea of its value to you, rather than having to make a buying/evaluation decision before gaining the knowledge of how it will actually work out and be valued by you once purchased and in use. Since the value of something to an individual may go up or down in time after the initial usage, the Value-for-Value approach can even be extended to additional return of value to the producer if one later realizes that the information/service/product was of even more value than that which one first returned. And vice-versa, if one sends value to the producer/creator and later realizes that one overvalued the information/service/product (but not simply because it was lost/stolen/damaged) then one should be able to request and get back some of the value already remitted.