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No other business endeavor on the planet operates on "production time" when pricing products. Products are priced according to their value. Given a reasonably
by TimJYoung 8y ago
No other business endeavor on the planet operates on "production time" when pricing products. Products are priced according to their value. Given a reasonably competitive market, that value will be accurate and fair for customers, and the customers will be able to find a similar product that does most or all of what they want at the price point that they can afford.
- matheusmoreira 8y agoProducts are scarce. Data isn't. What if everyone had a Star Trek replicator? Would they still pay for products according to their value? That's what a computer acts like.
- TimJYoung 8y agoYes, and software products are the sum total of all of the effort put into developing, advertising, maintaining, and supporting them. The fact that they are distributed as data is an inconsequential fact that obscures what they actually represent, and that is very much a human achievement no different from painting a picture or building a couch. There are tooling costs and all sorts of ongoing fixed costs, just like any other business. As for Star Trek: when that day comes, we'll deal with it then.
- rootlocus 8y agoYou would probably pay for: the replicator, the recipe,the ingredients and the energy used by the replicator. However, Star Trek has a different economy from ours.