This is a reiterating post, feel free to skip it.<\/p>\n
So, one of the things that I’ve talked about before is how our current economic system is very poorly equipped to deal with people selling very cheaply distributed intellectual property. It’s even more poorly equipped to deal with large corporations doing so.<\/p>\n
Here’s the issue. There’s a finite amount of money in play. Any time the government prints more, some very not-too-bright economists (Actually, they’re probably very smart, they just can’t see the forest for the trees) tell us that means the money is worth less. They, for whatever reason, can’t make the leap that there’s in fact more value (things that money can buy) available every day and that the money is a pointer to that value, not something with intrinsic worth of it’s own. However, because there’s a finite amount of money but you can make a infinite number of copies of intellectual property without diminishing it’s value (or at least N copies, where N is the number of potential users of said property), this leads to the money getting “bunched up” – landing in the hands of just a few individuals. Now, if those individuals were smart, they would give it away or spend it as fast as it came in, because that’s the choice that leads to the greatest wealth for all. However, they’ve been listening to economists for too long and think there is such a thing as a “money supply” and that money is a good all it’s own with it’s own value. (And, it’s true, you can live like that for a while, but sooner or later, with a finite resource chasing a infinite one, you’re going to find yourself short on money – and since money is just a *pointer* to value and not actual value, this is going to have deleterious effects on the operation of the system as a whole)<\/p>\n