Sabri writes:
Let me add one more question to Jon Baranov's:
Does information have any value?
Information is not scarce since once it is produced anyone can use it at no
cost to others.
That doesn't establish that it's not scarce--that is, that it incurs no
opportunity costs to produce--but rather that it can be collectively
consumed once produced, i.e. that the marginal cost of making information
available to additional consumers, *once it is produced,* is (virtually) zero.
Further, once information is produced its reproduction
embodies more or less no labor, for all practical purposes, that is.
In this aspect it is no different than any public good, but such goods
still require labor to produce, and thus would presumably have value.
Is information a noncommodity with some value or a commodity with no value?
If information is produced for exchange--as it clearly is in the case of
books, CDs, software programs, etc.--then it's a commodity. If it requires
resources to produce, even if its consumption is collective, then it has a
value. One way to think of this is to treat the collectivity of
zero-marginal-cost consumers as the good's single consumer. The good is
costly to produce for that costly consumer, and thus has value.
Gil
