From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 11:49:32 MDT
> > Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> But material abundance doesn't translate to informational abundance. We
> know that human knowledge is doubling. So what? It is still quite
> finite, and as such it is subject to economies of scarcity, ergo it must
> be treated as property to be managed and utilized most effectively.
"Scarcity" in that sense (i.e., finiteness of supply) is not what gives
rise to the efficacy of property as a solution for efficient distribution.
What gives rise to it is lack of simultaneous use--I cannot use a piece of
land to serve my will and your will simulataneously if I want to build
a house and you want to plant corn. This would be true even with infinite
supply of land, because any one piece of land still can't be used to
multiple conflicting purposes, and there might be a reason to value a
specific piece of land over abundant equivalents--its proximity to others,
for example.
Information, no matter how finite in supply, does not have that property.
No matter how you choose to use a piece of information to serve your will,
I can use that same piece of information to serve mine without interfering,
unless we go out of our way to make it exclusive by passing laws against
simultaneous use.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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