Finishing up a paper summarizing the "Worldly Philosophers," and ruminating on the absurdity of supply and demand. Some things will always be at top demand- health and food pop to mind, to say nothing of personal security- aren't we willing to pay every last penny we have to keep from starving, suffering or being killed? So what's supplying a market-based service and what is just ransoming?
Also, theft. I know private property is supposed to be held sacrosanct above all else, but in the logic of supply and demand, doesn't theft just mean that the price the market is willing to bear is 0. I'm thinking mostly of non-essential items (the argument is slightly different if you are stealing bread to eat) like, oh, say, music. I really enjoy music and *innovation* has made it possible for me to enjoy it for free without depriving anyone else of it (as opposed to if I really like paintings by Munch and took one home). Which basically means I'm willing to pay $0 for music. I am however willing to pay some money for the physical object of a disk with pretty pictures on the cover and liner notes. So what I'm saying is, why do record companies keep trying? Aren't they supposed to dry up and go away when they, as businesses, are no longer profitable? They are essentially cranking out supply for a demand that financially amounts to 0.
more inane ramblings to come soon, but for the moment I had best get back to the graded writing.
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3 comments:
Let us say you complete your education and write a beautiful, thought=provoking thesis, or better yet a book. If I somehow get a copy of the book, download it and read it, would this bother you? The demand must be 0 since I got it for free.
howdy hoosierboy,
I realize you commented months ago, but what can I say, I forgot about my lame blog until today.
to answer your question, no it would not bother me, quite frankly I'm sick of having to pay $50 to hear what some academic thinks about the preservation of the Ozarks--if I wrote a book that someone thought was actually worth reading, they're welcome to it. The only people that make money off of academic books are the publishing houses. And they make a lot of money keeping people from getting information that could be free. But if you downloaded and actually read my book, the demand in terms of the information wouldn't be 0, it'd be something else. But the demand in terms of paying for it, yeah, that'd be $0 (or, whatever you pay to access the internet maybe?), and 0 is what it ought to be.
Now you, according to your blog, are in manufacturing. I'm not sure what it is exactly that you make, but I suspect it has some actual economic value-- there are raw materials to be bought, labor to be paid, marketing, distribution-- all things that cannot be done away with.
I'm being overly simple about all of it, but hey, its a lame blog.
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