From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 17:44:28 MDT
On Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:49 PM Lee Daniel Crocker lee@piclab.com
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.
Actually, that's true, but that's part of the scarcity issue. Scarcity
in use as well as in supply. I don't see how the two would conflict,
though they are conceptually separable. (Granted, also people do work
out timeshare contracts. Ultimately, property is about use and the
service the thing can do for you -- not about the purely physical,
intrinsic aspects of the object in question, but those in relation to
you.)
(It should also be pointed out that while the same piece of information
can be stored in multiple locations, each location then loses its
ability to store other information. This would also occur in quantum
storage devices, though to a lesser extent.)
> 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.
This is true overall, but not all types of information are of the same
value when everyone knows them. Specifically, local knowledge and trade
secrets tend to be valuable to people because their value consists
partly in other people's ignorance.
E.g., a person who figures out the price of good X is higher than it
should be, she has a change to make a simple arbitrage profit. If
everyone knows that or even if only the people she's selling to know
that, the profit potential evaporates -- or is much less. Now, of
course, she and her buyers and all humanity can know the price together,
but the information is pretty much useless the more people who know it.
(See the work of Hayek here on information types, such as in his "The
Use of Knowledge in Society"
(http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Economics/HayekUseOfKnowledge.html).)
Similar things might apply in a nanotech world too. In fact, I would
also say that nanotech does not eliminate physical scarcity either.
Nanotech still needs energy to run. It will need material inputs.
(Hopefully, these could be limited and recycling would be much more
advanced, but I'm not going to assume these needs won't exist. Also, if
you build something like an M-brain with nanotech, you are probably
going to use everything you possibly can, so there might be even less
room for mistakes and waste, making matter more valuable -- since each
piece of matter brings you higher densities of computation. Likewise,
each inert piece can be seen as a waste -- or, at least, as foregone
computation.) It will still give off waste -- if only in the form of
heat. There will also be errors and the like.
Does this mean intellectual property is A-okay? I'm not sure. I
certainly think the current system is flawed. It's mainly the result of
government interventions in the market. I'm not sure what a totally
free market IP system would look like. It might be nonexistent. That
might not be so bad.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html
Here's a photo of me from behind:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/pic004.jpg
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