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Markets in everything
Deron Bauman reports to me:
Information Age Prayer is
a site that charges you a monthly fee to say prayers for you. A typical
charge is $4.95 per month to say three prayers specified by you each
day.
"We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each
prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying," the
company states. "Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of
the subscriber displayed on screen.
"Prices, however, are dictated by the length of the prayer. As noted
in the Information Age Prayer FAQ, "A discounted prayer will cost less
than other prayers of similar length."
Here is the full story.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on April 6, 2009 at 02:33 PM in Religion | Permalink
Comments
I know of people who pay others to say kaddish (the Jewish prayer of mourning) on their behalf, in honor of a deceased parent. It's not "common" but it's also not so odd.
Posted by: Dan at Apr 6, 2009 2:40:41 PM
What's next? Paying people (illegal immigrants, I suppose) to go to Church for you on Sundays?
What about fasting? You can be very creative with outsourcing...
Posted by: MS at Apr 6, 2009 2:51:37 PM
I know You and the Holy Ghost were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Posted by: HAL 9000 at Apr 6, 2009 3:14:23 PM
I'm reminded of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God
Posted by: jt at Apr 6, 2009 3:16:15 PM
My Jewish friend in college paid me to turn on lights for them, so why shouldn't they pay for prayer, too?
Posted by: Jimbino at Apr 6, 2009 3:29:57 PM
Wow, this is pretty close to the "electric monk" from Douglas Adams' _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_:
"The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."
Posted by: David at Apr 6, 2009 3:38:47 PM
Brilliant! Now if only I could find someone to pay so I could go to heaven ...
Posted by: Neal at Apr 6, 2009 5:17:57 PM
"My Jewish friend in college paid me to turn on lights for them"
are light switches kosher?
Posted by: working class at Apr 6, 2009 7:03:25 PM
Wow... the ways some people come up with to make money. I think it is absolutely ridiculous to say you don't have enough time to pray for yourself. They charge you $3.95 for a simple Lord's Prayer everyday for a month. This is absolutely insane to say that 15 minutes worth of time is worth almost $4. If this was true, your time would be worth $384 a day, which is close to $140,000 a year. I know time is very precious but if something such as prayer was really that important I believe it would be easy to take 30 seconds out of your day to say the Lord's Prayer.
I think this is a crazy scam for money. The things some people will do these days for money is absolutely absurd and so are some of the things people will pay for. I guess I can't judge morally what other people do based on my religious beliefs; but, I think that there should be some kind of rule for certain businesses that are allowed to be created. Many people are tricked everyday into thinking they are buying something when they really aren't. I guess regardless of the economy people will always be greedy for money and will do anything to get it.
Posted by: MEM at Apr 6, 2009 10:03:51 PM
@MEM: What? Who is tricking whom? You must know something about Information Age Prayer that we don't. Please share! Also, I would be interested in hearing your ideas about how to decide on which businesses "are allowed to be created."
Posted by: Curt Fischer at Apr 6, 2009 10:13:00 PM
What I want to know is how the market for electronic prayers works. Or more specifically, how do I get market-share?
Posted by: improbable at Apr 6, 2009 11:46:42 PM
The Fuegger bankers in Augsburg have run a prayers-for-rent scheme since 1516
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei
Posted by: Stefano Bertolo at Apr 7, 2009 12:36:44 AM
Presumably, God reads all emails too, opening the possibility of sending millions of spam-prayers.
Posted by: Zamfir at Apr 7, 2009 2:34:53 AM
The Fuggers? They're the ones who went bankrupt because they lent heavily to the Hapsburgs, who had major wars and went bankrupt half a dozen times, right?
Anyway, @MEM: Something is (nominally) worth what people will pay for it; no more, no less. If all information is being disclosed, I don't see what the problem is; they're merely capitalizing on irrationality.
Posted by: Neal at Apr 7, 2009 6:04:40 AM
Mechanized prayer is not new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_wheel
Posted by: Cyrus at Apr 7, 2009 6:41:29 AM
Full speed backwards into the Middle Ages.
Posted by: Pat Mathews at Apr 7, 2009 9:21:26 AM
Raivo really likes this post. Is that a good or bad sign?
Posted by: Greg at Apr 7, 2009 10:55:28 AM
I remember hearing (second-hand, so unreliably) that the Dalai Lama had accepted that a computer hard-drive can function as a prayer wheel. So write your mantra to disc, keep the plates spinning, and you accumulate more merit than you could in years of repeating the mantra yourself.
Posted by: Dan at Apr 7, 2009 2:00:51 PM
The sad thing is that people who believe in a God, believe in a god that is so easily fooled. What happened to anomniscient and omnipotent god? For $4.95 a month I can fool my god into thinking I am praying to him/her and fulfilling my worship requirement. Geez.
Posted by: techreseller at Apr 8, 2009 11:27:34 AM
In all of this someone forgot that prayer is there for us to develop a closer relationship with God and discernment of His perfect will for us.
If we outsource it to the computer, at best, the computer will become more in touch with God's will and that is clearly that: Windows applications won't crash and the blue screen of death will be avoided forever.
Posted by: Ooops! at Oct 8, 2009 12:32:56 PM
