Is Our Future Really $0?

05/14/2008 Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez

Chris Anderson, a well-known business guru in the world of online commerce, imagines a world in which all internet services are free. But he has made an error.

The reason some goods are given away for free in some markets has no relation to any hypothetical notion of “marginal costs tending to zero.” In fact, those supposed free goods are “given” to us in exchange for our time and attention. As time is an increasingly scarce resource, its value is steadily rising, in terms of storage, processing, and bandwidth, writes Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

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