Love Will Pay the Bills

In 2009 I heard a song called "Summer Cat" by a band called Billie the Vision and the Dancers. It was used in a commercial for a Spanish beer that someone posted on Facebook and I thought it was pretty catchy. So I looked up the band and listened to more of their songs. Though a bit silly at times, with some literal lyrics I couldn’t relate to, I found them entertaining and made it to the website of their record label which I borrowed to title this post: Love Will Pay the Bills. I was surprised to find that it was also the record company’s motto. Each of the band’s four albums were available to download for free, in their entirety, for me to keep and play on any device with no licensing restrictions. In return they asked only for donations and did so without annoying popups or adding me to a mailing list where they would continually ask for more. They gave no recommended contribution amount and there was no impression they would try to make me feel guilty if I never paid them anything. I thought it was incredible that they would so naively trust their fans, and the public at large, to provide the financial support required to continue to pursue lives as musicians without any requirement for them to do so. So I took a minute, thought about how much value the music had brought to my life, and how much it would continue to bring now that I had four albums downloaded, and gave them $20. I felt very happy about the exchange.

Last night I was reminded of the Love Will Pay the Bills record company when I recently ate dinner at a vegan curry restaurant on King Street in the Sydney suburb of Newtown called Lentil as Anything which had much of the same approach. The restaurant, it’s name a play on some Aussie band I’d never heard of from the ‘70s, revolved around the idea of inclusiveness. They would serve dinner to whomever would show up regardless of their circumstances. Their menu, which only featured a couple different dishes and was written on a chalk board outside, had no prices. There was no cash register, only a box near the door where patrons could slip in some cash on the way out.

Google said the place was open until 9pm. My girlfriend and I turned up at 8:28 and there was already a sign outside saying that they were closed, with a small crowd of 10 or so still waiting outside. The reason for the early closure was not what you usually encounter at other dining establishments in their final hour, namely, that the employees hate their jobs and want to close up as soon as possible. Demand was overwhelming that night and they had run out of food and places to seat people.

The hostess came back outside, saw the two of us, confirmed we were indeed a party of two, and went back inside to figure out where to put us. Two minutes later we were told that we would have to sit at a group table with a bunch of other people we didn’t know. She was very apologetic about this. When we got to the table, it seemed there was no more room, but they pulled up a couple of chairs and stuck us on the corner. Others diners scooted over to accommodate. “This will do just fine!” The server came out and very apologetically told us that they were out of everything on the menu except for the curry plate. “Ok, that sounds great!” Five minutes later we were told they were out of rice so we would be getting more curry and hopefully that was ok. “Yeah, no worries.”

In any other restaurant these would be insufferable tragedies that would probably convince me to leave, complain, or maybe write a bad Yelp review. But completely missing was that struggle I usually feel when I patronize businesses. Normally, I read a menu, check out the prices, try to evaluate whether they were fair based on the expected goods and services I would receive, and base my excitement and enjoyment of the meal accordingly. This did not happen at Lentils because there were no prices on the menu. So instead I simply felt very grateful that we were able to get in, and that they were able to provide anything at all for us.

I was reminded of S. N. Goenka’s words about how the ego dissolves when someone gives you something for free. It’s true. That’s why he decided to offer his meditation courses to any capable person for free even though people thought he was crazy at the time. When my friends cook for me, I eat with gratitude. The only time I ever feel bad when eating is when I feel like I’ve overpaid.

Talking with the manager of Lentils, who sat down at our table after dinner for discussion, said the welcome to the community and the financial donations they’ve received have been very strong so far. The operation is still quite new in Sydney, but they are scouting new sites for expansion. So I pondered – if it works for selling music, and it works for selling food, could the Love Will Pay the Bills model expand to other businesses?

This business model, or the “gift economy” as Charles Eisenstein refers to it in his book Sacred Economics (which I definitely recommend and is distributed on the same pay what you want basis http://sacred-economics.com), runs contrary to a lot of assumptions that my introductory economics class engrained, primarily that individuals make decisions in their own selfish best interests. It may be true much of the time, but sometimes people do things out of love. They do things because they care about others and want to make people smile or make them happy. I would actually argue these things can be the same, that it is in everybody’s long-term self-interests to make other people happy, because that ultimately makes the individual happy.

Western economics might be receiving credited for solving many problems that it didn’t solve: eliminating poverty, curing disease, and eradicating fascism. First of all, all these things still exist. They are just hidden a little better from the average middle-class American. But I don’t believe that the human ingenuity which has made strides in these fields has come from the incentive to acquire more money. The inventions that come from the love of money, like branding, collateralized debt obligations, Martin Shkreli, and Super PACs have shifted dollars around, but they rarely solve any of life’s problems. It’s selfishness. Yet, many people praise these solutions for the financial successes they produce.

The root of these solutions comes from the desire to solve problems and the desire to help others. It’s an expression of selflessness. A lot of people talk about the things they would do if money were not an obstacle. They would teach these things, care for and spend time with people, refine their artistic abilities or build and design things. But most of them never accomplish any of these things because they never have the financial security to do it. In this way, Western economics is a barrier to moving society forward. For this reason, I have great admiration for Billie the Vision and Dancers, Lentil as Anything, Goenka, and Charles Eisenstein (I know Radiohead’s In Rainbows distribution and the New York Times’ soft paywall (in practice to a degree) have also utilized similar concepts in pricing) for their courage to believe that if they just do the things they want to do, make music, cook for people, teach meditation, or educate people about different economic possibilities, that the people they help will be so grateful that the money problem will sort itself out.

If you know me, or have read anything else I’ve written, you have probably worked out that I am incredibly cynical about much of modern society. Like cynical to the point where I immediately distrust anyone who asks me for money. I assume it must be part of a scam and that I will feel cheated in the end. That is the beauty of the pay what you feel gift economy, is that it takes away that cynicism and anxiety and replaces it with gratitude. It feels like a step in the right direction, a potential solution for the soulless financial transactions we typically have these days.

Now you might be saying “OK, I see the benefits for the buyer, you can receive something and pay less than market rate if you want, but it seems like less money for the seller. So why would someone want to operate their business this way?” Great question! The answer is that while money is important it isn’t everything. Value is more important. And while many conflate money and value as being entirely interchangeable, they are not because value can be quite a subjective item.

If I eat a meal that I considered terrible that I paid $5, I might still say that it was a bad deal even though $5 might be a petty sum to me. Someone else could really enjoy the taste and consider it a great bargain. So there is absolutely the possibility that the customer could pay more than the market price. The model emphasizes quality, but a significant part is connecting with customers.

When I went to Lentils, I knew that they were a volunteer driven charity organization that provides meals to the hungry and work experience for people that need it. I knew that anything I gave beyond the cost of the meal would support those causes.  This encouraged me to give more.  In an age of branding and faceless corporations, there is a large disconnect customers feel about what they receive, who does the work, and who receives the money. If it was a massive company like Apple with a billion dollars in cash sitting on their balance sheet, I would be much more likely to stinge on pay what you want product. If I knew the person that was made or provided the service I would likely pay more. At that point it should work quite like the tipping model. People are willing to give according to the quality of service provided.

Pay what you want can open up your customer base to many who may not otherwise have chosen buy your good or service. Would I have downloaded all those Billie the Vision and the Dancers songs if I had to pay $40? Surely not, and now they have one fan and $20 more than they would have otherwise. This works especially well with digital media, licenses, etc. where the marginal cost of each product is minimal.

At this point it’s difficult to determine how this model could be implemented other markets or businesses. If the price is not determined in advance or even correlated to market competition, product inputs, or utility, but rather, something much more subjective like gratitude, it becomes very tough to make predictions and business decisions. However, it seems very achievable for certain types of businesses that provide face-to-face services and charities. I would encourage anyone who runs such a business, or any business at all to consider if adopting a pay what you want pricing model is possible.

At this stage, a full transition into a gift economy is still many years away at best and it is unclear if it is possible. There are just too many cynics out there (like me) who wouldn’t feel any gratitude and pay nothing. Sacred Economics goes into more depth than I do about how a transition into a Gift Economy is possible and it involves adjusting several other parts of our economy. But in the meantime, there are still a lot of bills to pay.