CGP Grey, Subbable, and a decent income.

The Green brothers have launched a service called Subbable that lets you let Youtube creators make videos without having to resort to advertising for revenue. Briefly, it invites fans to make monthly subscriptions (usually of, it turns out, around $5, but starting from as low as nothing) to creators, contributing to those projects meeting a pre-set funding goal. There are a few questions I wish I knew the answers to, but my general response is that it is a good thing, as generally I just don't like adverts very much, usually considering them to be at best a dead weight loss on the economy (two very similar products pit adverts against one another competing for market share, their revenues are the same as if they had not competed on that front at all but their costs are much higher) and that it favours big economic players over smaller ones. At worst I think advertising is a pernicious scheme to monetize self-hatred and unhappiness. Obviously these are just (strong) opinions, but I thought I'd nail my flag to the mast anyway so it's up there and you can poke it or whatever.

I've subscribed to CGP Grey's videos, because they are absolutely fantastic and because I love maps and constitutions and election systems and other social science geeky stuff. Doing some quick using-the-search-bar-as-a-calculator estimations it looks like his channel is currently at roughly $5000 of a roughly $12000 monthly goal. That's how it looks anyway, based on an average monthly subscription of $4.33 and 1126 subscribers so far. This comes out at about $144,000 a year, or about four times the UK median income or £21,000 (before tax). I think if he met his target that would put him in the econd highest tax bracket that pays 40% of income as tax, and there are various other property taxes and so on that we pay here in order to fund our generally excellent public services. The UK figure is the relevant one because that's where CGP lives (specifically in London which incidentally has the highest cost of living in the country). I don't have any problem with CGP earning a lot from his videos, and I am willing to stand corrected about any of my calculations. As far as I am concerned anyone who wants to give him money for his work is welcome to and based on that he can earn as much as he likes provided that he pays his taxes and if he starts getting really rich gives a lot to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or a similarly cost-effective charity (apparently helping against tropical diseases typically gives the best return in terms of improved human quality of life on amount donated). But the high figure does make one wonder what will happen if, say, he only gets 80% of the target. If that's the case will he get rid of 80% of ads? Will he have ads for two months and a week out of every year? Or will he figure: hey, stuff it, this is enough I'll be fine with this much after all. For that matter, what will he do if he goes over the target some months? Will the spillover be counted against any shortfall in later months? (It seems quite likely that there will be dips around January, and also after the honeymoon periods when popular shows first transition onto Subbable). I do think there is both a debate to be had on the correct response to these things here and some scope for extra information in the FAQs.

So, perhaps more transparency about these issues is in order, so that the people contributing to these projects financially can have a little bit of the accountability that has made Kickstarter such a successful platform. It certainly looks like a service that shows great promise, especially if it can develop a reputation for curating brilliant content and other little extras like that.

Taking a slightly more philosophical turn, is there an ethical imperative for people to restrict their income to some function of local or national medians, or to try to match up their household income to within some window? Persuasive research of the negative effects of inequality suggests that prosperity is not without its externalities, and so with such a baldly scalable means of income as this it is clear that these are ethical questions that both creators and subscribers ought to be asking, and if they do have insights and opinions, it would certainly make sense to share them in the open-minded, polite way that the internet is so famous for.