Here is a case where I’d appreciate your perspective: I sometimes provide “estimation as a service” as a consulting service for people who are making career decisions. This involves making some estimates about the likelihood of success and the value of different career choices. Some past examples are here (less elaborate) or here (more elaborate).
The problem is that at free market rates, this costs me, say, $50 to $200 worth of my time. But this is generally too much for students or early career people.
I’d be curious whether you’d think that I should make an exception, or whether you think that the reasons you outline in your post hold.
I think there are good reasons to make an exception here:
There’s a broader ecosystem value to having different perspectives available on career choice. So some of the indirect value of your services is realized wholly independently of the service user.
The risk of someone using your services merely because they are free, when they would be better served by a paid service, seems low.
The most obvious “substitute” for your services is arguably 80K, which doesn’t to my knowledge charge for its services.
This risk is further reduced because the students or early career people don’t have the money to purchase these services at market rate.
Moreover, it would be very inefficient to ask a grantmaker to decide which would-be clients should get a ~$50-200 grant for estimation services. This seems different from the cake hypothetical, where the group could (and probably does) seek funding for all its needs and throw a cake line item in the budget.
The counterfactual seems to be that some people wouldn’t get estimating-as-a-service at all. That seems undesirable on these facts in comparison to potential downsides that seem pretty attenuated.
Here is a case where I’d appreciate your perspective: I sometimes provide “estimation as a service” as a consulting service for people who are making career decisions. This involves making some estimates about the likelihood of success and the value of different career choices. Some past examples are here (less elaborate) or here (more elaborate).
The problem is that at free market rates, this costs me, say, $50 to $200 worth of my time. But this is generally too much for students or early career people.
I’d be curious whether you’d think that I should make an exception, or whether you think that the reasons you outline in your post hold.
I think there are good reasons to make an exception here:
There’s a broader ecosystem value to having different perspectives available on career choice. So some of the indirect value of your services is realized wholly independently of the service user.
The risk of someone using your services merely because they are free, when they would be better served by a paid service, seems low.
The most obvious “substitute” for your services is arguably 80K, which doesn’t to my knowledge charge for its services.
This risk is further reduced because the students or early career people don’t have the money to purchase these services at market rate.
Moreover, it would be very inefficient to ask a grantmaker to decide which would-be clients should get a ~$50-200 grant for estimation services. This seems different from the cake hypothetical, where the group could (and probably does) seek funding for all its needs and throw a cake line item in the budget.
The counterfactual seems to be that some people wouldn’t get estimating-as-a-service at all. That seems undesirable on these facts in comparison to potential downsides that seem pretty attenuated.
Thanks Jason