G'day Gene,
> Actually, some of the brightest minds are on PEN-L
Well, I ain't one of 'em, but will start the ball rolling with what I take to
be the standard leftie scenario.
> and we should be laying out policy options for the world.
Yeah, but I'm sure Jackson Hole ain't about doing the world any favours.
Anyway, as for M$, I think words like 'public good' and 'natural monopoly' are
still to be found in some economics text books. Seems to me a standardised
and seamlessly interactive software system is what we need; that the quality
of M$ products is lessened precisely because it is a *private* monopoly upon
which commerce, citizenship and human sociability have come to depend; that
the product in question is not consumed in use; and that great costs are
involved in the witholding of the product from 'free riders'. It also seems
to me that competition is not between MS and other software firms, but between
last year's Windows and this year's Windows, so upgrading has to be forced
upon the consumer by hook or by crook if profits are to be sustained. And
certainly, one producer could produce a necessarily standardised system
cheaper than a plethora of competing firms.
If I'm right, the question is simply one of how best to control, produce and
disseminate a public good that is a natural monopoly. The logic (if it might
be called that) implies the domain in question is the world at large, so then
we have talk some mechanism (involving an accountable transnational or
international institution, I s'pose) by which input costs are to be shared.
Then access would logically be universal, and could equally logically be free.
So stick the lot on the Net.
Same with most lifesaving drugs, too, I'd've thought.
> Leading off in Jackson Hole will be Larry Summers, presenting a
> paper co-authored by Brad DeLong. Perhaps Brad will share that with
> us. From other Summers utterances I know he has been quite confused
> about the issue.
Brad has a beaut paper of the info-as-problematic-commodity / economic-
theory-as-unready-for-'information-age' variety (written wth Michael Froomkin)
on his site.
