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The author is postulating that the price of a good is determined by its cost of production, which is essentially the Marxist theory of value that has been discr
by jacoblyles 17y ago
The author is postulating that the price of a good is determined by its cost of production, which is essentially the Marxist theory of value that has been discredited for over a century. Else, he is proposing that the demand curve is completely parameterized by cost of production, which is a radically new idea that I sadly don't see much promise in.
- alttab 17y agoI agree with you that demand isn't dependent on costs always - and I don't think the author is either. He's saying that demand is still high, as is supply. But because the marginal cost of each unit is so low (on the postulation of infinite copies), that piracy is how the price is "fixed" economically speaking. This isn't a pro-piracy position, but if you see it as each copy of the game had to be physically manufactured piracy would drop to zero - otherwise it'd be called theft.
- jacoblyles 17y agoThat the marginal cost of copying media is zero is a pretty mundane observation. The author goes beyond this to hypothesize that demand moves according to some abstract "fair price" (that happens to suit the author's semi-Marxist definition of fairness), and that piracy only occurs when the market price is set above this value. This second point is the only novel bit of the author's post, and it's just not very good.