The tragedy of the commons.

Or, People are the worst.

I was listening to The Self Publishing Show this morning while I walked the dogs around the hill. James Blatch was interviewing Alex Smith from a service called Book Vault, which lets indie authors sell hard copies of their books direct from their websites.

Smith explained that they launched the service with free uploads, but quickly had to introduce a one-time upload fee of about $20 per book because some grifting arsehat uploaded 20,000 different kitten picture books.

So much of what’s terrible about the modern world can be explained by this one anecdote, I reckon. Some guys had a great an idea which would make life a little bit better for everyone. Some other guy saw a way to exploit their idea to make his life, and his alone, more profitable. And we all took one more step towards the shit singularity.