On the Freedom to Tinker blog, Timothy Lee explores the irrelevance of the economic notion of "free riding" when it comes to many kinds of online collaboration. As Lee notes, many thinkers on this subject have talked about how projects like Wikipedia "overcome" the free-rider anxiety (the idea that someone else will benefit from your labor without having to contribute to it), but that's not quite right: when someone else's enjoyment of your labor costs you nothing, and buys you fame, then you don't have a free-rider problem at all:
The second problem with the "free riding" frame is that it fails to appreciate that the sheer scale of the Internet changes the nature of collective action problems. With a traditional meatspace institution like a church, business or intramural sports league, it's essential that most participants "give back" in order for the collective effort to succeed. The concept of "free riding" emphasizes the fact that traditional offline institutions expect and require reciprocation from the majority of their members for their continued existence. A church in which only, say, one percent of members contributed financially wouldn't last long. Neither would an airline in which only one percent of the customers paid for their tickets.
The Trouble with "Free Riding"
