[p2p-research] Revisiting The Replicator Analogy: How Infinite Goods Create More Jobs

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Revisiting The Replicator
Analogy: How Infinite Goods Create More Jobs via Techdirt by Michael
Masnick on 9/11/09
Recently, in writing about a DRM scheme, I used the analogy of the Star
Trek food replicator to explain why it made no sense to turn infinite
goods, like content, into artificially scarce goods. There was a lot of
back and forth in the comments about the appropriateness of the
analogy, though I still think the basic point stands: it makes no sense
to artificially limit an infinitely available resource. In fact, it
only leads to bad things. However, one of our readers has written up a
fantastic blog post where he tries to present a similar, but much, much
better analogy: A better analogy would be if the replicator only made
tomatoes. You could have as many tomatoes as you wanted, they'd always
be perfect and delicious, and they'd always be free. This would put
tomato farmers out of business. But these tomato farmers could likely
start growing something else instead. And what happens to the rest of
the economy? Pizza and pasta restaurants suddenly find that a major
ingredient in many of their dishes just became free. Now, for the same
dish, they can charge less, or buy higher quality ingredients, or make
more profit. And if you're a really talented cook specializing in
tomatoes? Your skills are now in very high demand.

And there is still a demand for the people who bring the tomatoes from
the replicator to your table. There is still a demand for the person
who stews and cans the tomatoes, or dices and seasons them. And all the
other food items, the ones that aren't in infitnite supply, still need
people to produce, process, and distribute them.

This is what's happening in the music industry, and starting to happen
in the publishing industry. Some parts of the industries are finding
their functions obsolete. Instead of looking at the money they could
save with electronic distribution, and what good use they could put
that money to, the industry is seeking new laws and regulations to
limit the infinite supply so business can continue as usual.

Even if every single song, book, and movie was distributed digitally
for free, there would still be a need for the music, publishing, and
movie industries. There would still be demand for editors, producers,
marketers, and all sorts of other services that these industries have
always provided.

Reasonable people aren't calling for the abolition of the music,
publishing, and movie industries. They're just asking these industries
to look to the future, and stop trying to limit supply to protect
obsolete business models. Read that over a few times. It's about the
best description/analogy of what we've been trying to say here that
I've ever heard.

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