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Why "free" often doesn't come cheap
Interesting anecdote in Sunday's New York Times: in his new book The White Man's Burden, William Easterly discusses one example of how the millions of dollars that the U.S. and other Western nations give in foreign aid are wasted.
Say you want to reduce the number of deaths due to malaria. Public health officials tend to agree that a cheap way to do that is to encourage the use of insecticide-laden mosquito nets in poverty-stricken, equitorial countries. So the U.S. has poured millions of dollars into distributing free mosquito nets. Problem is, the nets end up getting used for things other than protecting people from mosquitos. Why? Because people face no costs for taking multiple nets--or for using the nets for whatever purpose they like. Easterly shows that by working with local groups to sell the nets for as little as 50 cents, donor nations can dramatically improve the results--more nets get out to people who use them for the intended purpose, and thus fewer new cases of malaria.
I love this story because it validates some long-held instincts I've had about selling Stay Free. Whenever I bring bunches of Stay Free! to conferences or other events, I try to sell them for low price--usually $1--instead of giving 'em away free. People who get something for free too often treat it as trash; they'll pick it up without thinking about whether they actually want it, but even a nominal fee will jolt them into consciousness and force them to make a decision.
Posted by carrie on 03/20/2006 | Permalink
Comments
The Economist has the president of a group who distributes condoms and other birth control aids to poor countries making a similar point: "Mr Harvey says that rather than donating contraceptives it is better to market and sell them—even if only for pennies. This brings lots of shopkeepers and others into the distribution network, and it also means customers are more likely to value—and therefore use properly—something they have paid for." http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3262292
Posted by: Michael S. | Mar 20, 2006 5:38:37 PM
Also true for comedy. Apparently everyone in NYC has been burned by a sign or barker advertising "free comedy" so everyone now thinks that they will only get what they pay for. On the other hand, charging anywhere from one to five bucks usually generates a larger - and more attentive - crowd.
Posted by: Charles Star | Mar 21, 2006 1:28:42 AM
The sadness of it being, as in your example with Stay Free, that something without a stated monetary value is looked upon and treated as having (giving) a lesser personal value than something with a monetary value,at least in gesellschaft characterized relations, relations from within we "meet" so much of our world today.
As for condoms and mosquito nets, it's hard not to argue that these goods comes to best use as std and well mosquito protection, and that all means that ensure those usages are good means. What's interesting though is the creativety and well, the heterogenity of practice, these goods (when they are free) are being used in, how they come into being. What comes to mind is research made by Ann-Marie Mol on the "Zimbabwe Bush Pump" - where she argues that these water pumps "fluidity", i.e. it's ability to work with replaced parts etc. , and come into being in ways that the engineer of the pump hadn't even imagined is a large part of its success take a look at >http://locus.cwrl.utexas.edu/spinuzzi/?q=node/159< for a better roundup.. Though as stated these particular goods should not be "fluid" and if putting a price to them makes makes them more "stable" in their usage that's surely good.
Posted by: ghozt | Apr 9, 2006 5:43:00 PM
