Re: More Courtney, extrapolations...

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From: Mike Masnick (mike@techdirt.com)
Date: Wed Jun 14 2000 - 21:46:47 PDT


At 09:44 PM 6/14/00 -0500, Adam L. Beberg wrote:

>Didn't communism fail (first) because of this removal of rewards?
>Hmmmmm...

The thing I find most amusing about any argument of this nature (and I've
been having them for many years now) is the second people start giving away
stuff for free it starts getting compared to communism. Is there a
corallary to Godwin's law for this?

Why is it that people who are normally rational thinkers who understand
basic economics, assume that basic economics goes out the window when the
market points out the price equals zero. This isn't communism, this is
pure capitalism. Economics says that the price of a good should be equal
to the marginal cost to produce the good, and for a digital good, well,
hell, that's $0. Therefore, in a perfectly competitive world with no
artificial boundaries to make things inefficient, the price should head
towards the marginal cost, and it looks like it has.

I also find it amusing that people start assuming that it's up to us, the
consumer, to figure out the way to compensate the artist. That sounds more
like communism to me...

Just trying to stir up some trouble. Now that I've scooped Jeff on some
news, I think everything else goes down hill from here.

 -Mike


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