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0 pointsscrollaway11y ago0 comments

I am willing to give you £50 in cash for free as long as you come pick it up at my place in Sweden.

This offer is only available for you alone and in person. Are you interested? Because I'd really like to know how your pedantic definition of "free" works out for you when it's obvious that things that require infrastructure (such as online communications, or traveling to a different country)... require infrastructure.

(TLDR: If you don't find it amazing that with a very small indirect investment we can actually communicate with people anywhere in the world for free, you and I need to have a long chat about being spoiled.)

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3 comments · 1 top-level

meepmorp11y ago· 2 in thread

Well, you could mail the money. Using the national postal systems that exist in both countries that have established means of transferring mail long distances. Same as the farmer in rural China could send a message to the Google engineer.

It costs money, yes, but if you're sending a one off message and it's not time citical, it's not unreasonable to say that sending the message via email is cheaper overall.

Edit: which isn't to say that communication via the Internet isn't really cool, just that it's not actually free, nor would it necessarily be cheaper than sending a message via other means, depending on the circumstances.

scrollawayOP11y ago

You missed the critical "within seconds" in the original message. Email is near-instantaneous.

Are we seriously debating the merits of email over snail-mail on hacker news? I hope this is merely people enjoying being thick and provocative, because the alternative is that there's some massive bubble-blindness going on right now.

meepmorp11y ago

And I was considering nsns' point about how the costs associated with sending email aren't nonexistent, and how, given a certain set of concerns and constraints, might be higher than other means.

I also thought your £50 example was a bit silly. Of course infrastructure costs money. There's means of communicating and delivering things like money that use infrastructure that require a far lower initial investment for a user, and that might be a better deal for that user, circumstances dependent. And not all communications need to be near-instantaneous.

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